Hollow Emperor

My rosy skin and frozen muscles soon thawed as I found myself cozily slumped by a wall of the snow dome.

The eternal white outside had set itself down for the long run and there would be once again, no night sky.

Frila's eyebrows raised momentarily upon our arrival but soon drifted back down to whatever she was doing.

I think she was reading and thoroughly examining a book of sorts.

It was entirely black and had no title.

Reading the pages, I saw no words.

But who knows? Maybe the entire book thing is different here as to Earth.

A bit more private, I suppose.

Red Dragon let his hood crumple on the white wall behind him as his eyes closed rationally.

A weakly and faint set of wrinkles emerged as his sneaky blonde hair flopped down.

I had given the black blade to him within the time span of our return.

But ah.

I need to cure him?

My mind fumbled with atrociously bizarre methods as my hands twitched and my ears perked with every insignificant sound.

Shock therapy?

No, he's too strong. It'd be tickles and toodles for him.

If not that then maybe-?

I clawed at my silken hair with a tired hand.

Red marks had emerged after we had returned to the grasp of warmth.

Signs of the overexertion used as I carried the black blade in battle.

The black-blade.

My mind clung to this topic in one fell swoop.

What was it?

Was it cursed?

It seemed cursed. A blade that had made me lose a sense of will, in return for power that I probably should not possess.

Not right now, at least.

It felt like I was being... manipulated?

My face developed an irksome expression as my eyes subtly shifted to the sight of Red Dragon's resting figure.

I had questions that were ramming at the locks of my lips which were forever sealed.

Frustrated, my hand gripped at the solidified snow below.

It felt like deep sand as my hand struggled to thrash it backward.

A faint tinge of warmth fizzled on my hand as the remnants of the flame contraption showed their experience.

The atmosphere felt so unlively that I would be unsurprised if Red Dragon or Frila had silently died without my knowledge.

"Hey."

My voice echoed off nothing. It just sat in the room and beckoned the necks of Frila and Red Dragon to turn slowly and with great strain.

I cleared my throat as lightly as I could before crossing eyes with Red Dragon.

"What is that blade?"

My voice urged the curiosity out of the deep depths of my throat as the room was somehow tumbled into another wreath of silence.

My eyes twitched and rapidly bounced from corners of the dome.

Red Dragon merely closed his eyes again as his mouth let slip a simple and obtrusive answer.

"It helps you with your Aura."

Feeling somewhat isolated by this act I continued rattling Red Dragon back into the real world.

"No, as in how does it help? Why does it help? Where does it help."

A quick string of questions had accidentally slipped through the gaps in my teeth.

I half-cursed but then admitted in my mind that this could be a good opportunity to get some hard-thought answers.

Red Dragon released one of his eyes from its bind as he scanned me obscurely.

His tongue slid over his teeth as he gave me a sly and quite unappreciated answer.

"Look. I used the blade and I turned out just fine. So at the end of the day, the blade works. Realistically? That blade is probably the best blade I have. Honestly, I only use my red blade became I'm extremely compatible with it."

His voice grew vicious, calm, and soothed as his condescending drive ended.

My eyebrows tilted in disappointment.

That was it?

No explanation for a curse?

Just that it helps with Aura?

He wasn't wrong but he was... Hiding something.

I felt like there was far more behind what he had briefly let out.

But it seems I wasn't the only person irritated here.

To my greatest unexpectations, Red Dragon's voice shrieked deeply in a way. I felt my eyes lines crease as I stared at him strangely.

"I don't usually get emotional. But I teach you a trick that has taken me and many others to the esteemed -S- Rank... And you do nothing to repay me?"

What?

I felt my world start to shake.

I didn't move an inch for fear of causing his seething cauldron of boils to erupt.

Why had his emotions changed so thoroughly in such a brief lapse?

I had thought about curing Red Dragon.

Even joked about it to an extent.

But I had never the full confidence to be capable of such a feat.

And if earlier, the Red Dragon had returned.

Right now, the unstable Red Dragon who I had first met had returned.

His eyes were rough and angered, his mouth was twitching in an ugly manner and his tongue was stuck between his teeth.

Call me the bad guy for taking a secret without payment but... I wasn't dying here.

"Vigar."

My voice muttered so lowly that not even the dangerously dark Red Dragon could notice a thing.

Vigar soon left and tension returned to my left arm.

I felt a force before me, Vigar.

Sure, Vigar would probably be plowed through in a microsecond but it was worth a shot.

I highly doubted that Red Dragon would strike me down.

My voice blurted itself out slowly and clumsily.

The pressure that one slip up could be my innards blasted into the wall behind me was showing.

"Well-. I can cure-."

"No."

His golden eyes burned as they both widened fully, becoming freakishly round in their exposed states.

"You cannot cure me."

His mouth moved freakishly animatedly as if someone had reposted the same movement on his mouth as he spoke.

His eyes did not waver and kept a firm grip on my figure.

My resilience that had built to form a hard shell over the year kicked in.

I wasn't just a meek student with a bit of grit that I was years and years ago.

I was a transmigrator.

I was confident in my situation.

"I can cure you. Just let me speak."

My words slid into his ears like thick lumps of coal as his face soured.

He picked himself up and headed in my direction.

His mood seemingly worsened with every step.

What had gone wrong?

My legs scrambled and bent, ready to rise at a moment's notice.

My hands flattened on the white floor as my eyes met his.

His figure loomed over me as his shadow tainted the snow before me and engulfed me in a world of black.

I felt the warmth in the area drop suddenly as my shoulders contracted uncomfortably.

Through the luminous umbra that had unveiled and contorted my vision, I saw two golden eyes gleaming and glaring.

"Tell me."

I swallowed whilst my eyes continued looking for an escape.

"Tell me, how I will be cured?"

I can't.

I wanted to say something like that.

But I couldn't.

He was still an unstable maniac.

I could admit that this event was through my own fault.

But I couldn't die here.

Not after coming so far.

Right?

I just wanted this dungeon to break down in that moment.

I wanted the world to split.

I needed it to split.

Desperately.

As my emotions turmoiled and sweat had seeped down my figure, my eyes subtly left to the front of the snow dome.

The veil of umbra from Red Dragon had vanished underwhelmingly. The pressure that had weighed on my figure like a stomach ache had vanished in a miracle.

A dark miracle.

Oh.

It was night.

The eternal white was dusted black.

Not black like soil or sand, but like paint.

Like wet, thinned black paint.

I then noticed that something stood to the left of Red Dragon. They possessed similar heights but a small object of some sort had landed on top of the other thing. I only saw a silhouette by the snow.

Its presence was remarkably unnoticeable, yet once I caught wind of it. My entire world seemed to crackle and bend away from this figure.

It felt as though the inwardly leaning snow-dome was creasing and forcing itself outwards.

The second my eyes grasped this figure, they struggled to yank themselves away.

As if they were being dragged in.

Upon its head, a Disbathory Crown of Black Steel sat sullenly. It possessed silver glints around its edges and didn't possess any aspect of royalty from my short gaze.

Below this heinous crown was a human-shaped head of palpable black.

Numerous tiny spikes poked in and out from the black source irrationally.

As these spikes continued popping out from various places in various quantities before sinking back in swiftly, I continued to look down.

The thing was equipped with a thick faded black fur coat. One of royal lineage.

It didn't look black from ink, but from aging and the passage of time.

I now noticed that it wasn't a silhouette. But so perpetually black that it had given off the undoubted image of a melancholy silhouette. I had been wrong.

The figure's entire form was smeared in black.

As its face continuously deformed and shifted Red Dragon too fell into its desires.

Unlike me, who was at this point completely and ultimately lost a word could shiver through his mouth. Fading into the space that bent away from this creature.

"Ho-llow."

His face had sunk comically down. Yet there was neither fun nor games here.

His voice was coarse and thin whilst his eyes blinked slowly. Trying to assure himself that the thing next to him wasn't real.

His body was as stuck as mine by this point.

Eerily, two omniscient silver eyes pulled themselves from the palpable black.

They were as human as could be and possessed a long pattern of ripples.

Red Dragon's eyes tried to pull themselves away and shut but before he knew it, the figure had reached out a hand.

Clawed at the end the figure's hand revealed his monster nature, Red Dragon watched under peril and the plane between life and death as the creature let its hand hover right before Red Dragons' face.

Nothing glorious or expensive on him could save him now.

His hood and attire could only miserably be stained by the figure before him.

Their eyes didn't waver.

Or rather, they couldn't.

Despite their similar heights, their power dynamic was clear.

I had already forgotten Frila's existence by this point.

Vigar's too.

But I'm sure that they too were caught up in the crepuscule spell.

They would probably live.

They were no ordinary beings after-all.

Or at least my suspicions were as so.

During this entire segment, my mind had been numbed and shaven to the point where a thought rising in my head would be a miracle.

But no miracles were granted entrance here.

Rather something else. Something sinister. Something black.

Somehow, the night that had settled outside breached the dome.

The last of the eternal white was bleached black as my senses were corrosively burnt.

As the black gas clawed at the last of the white, the black figure placed a heavy and withered black hand on Red Dragon's right shoulder.

And as the forbidden night rose and splintered within the dome, the two figures blended into the darkness, fading away.

The figure's silver-lit eyes did not blink once, nor did Red Dragon's. They merely kept their uncanny connection before they were blended away to who-knows-where.

If the omenic figure joined with the darkness, then Red Dragon was swept away by it.

Filling their crevices was the fall of thick black.

Looking back, it was probably a form of teleportation.

But I had no knowledge.

By the time my consciousness was pulled back into the white world.

Someone else had been pulled out of the white world.

Someone we needed.

Someone who had most likely died.

The Red Dragon was gone.

The Red Dragon had... died?