Hubert and Tianna
"Ugh…" he groaned.
Hubert opened his eyes slowly. His back felt numb, as was almost every part of his body.
"Wh-where… Ugh!"
He closed his eyes yet again, his hand placed on his head, as if keeping his head from exploding into a million pieces. His entire body was suddenly aching, and his throat was so hoarse that his previously said words were struggling to come out.
The smell of steel and rust, akin to a rotting odor, struck his nose.
"What?" Hubert muttered, his words coming out funny. Opening his eyes, the environment was blurry, or maybe that was what he saw.
Looking around, the place was almost abandoned, the pillars supporting the roof creaking and cracking. Tools and bottles of glasses were placed on the floor, like a carpenter drunkard had been here.
His sight was unreliable.
His hand groped around his surroundings, the texture of hard and rough wood felt on his fingertips. He looked downward, noticing the table that was his place of respite since.
Then his finger felt another texture, soft and hairy, straight and lush.
He looked to his side, where his hand seemingly reached. A head, one that was covered by hair colored ginger, familiar.
"I-Iva-"
Cough
He covered his mouth with his hand as something spluttered out. It felt liquid and wet.
His weary eyes, baggy, and heavy, widened.
Blood.
"Hubert?" Ivanna muttered, her voice almost a whisper in the quiet room.
"Iv…" Hubert said strugglingly, that was all he could say, a piece of her name, a beautiful name.
"You're awake! Wait," Ivanna's hand slipped into her pocket, reaching for something.
Then, she pulled out a bottle of liquid, an elixir colored red with glitters and strands floating in it sparklingly.
"Take this!" Ivanna said, extending her arms toward Hubert's dried lips.
"Wh-"
Gulp
Gulp
Gulp
He was forced, though he soon knew the effect of the potion. As if life surged from within the liquid and into his body, he felt better and healed.
His skin, though pale, felt as if thickened and tightened. His lips, once dried, quenched by the wetness. His sight, blurry and hurting, slowly returned to one that was clear and focused.
"W-we thought we lo-lost you," Ivanna said, trembling and teary.
"..." Hubert faced her, not understanding what she meant by that.
Suddenly, she launched forward and wrapped her arms around Hubert, hugging him tightly.
Hubert knew nothing, at first, he was rejecting the idea, even almost pushing her off him. Yet he knew the rarity of such a thing happening. His aching muscles gave up as he enjoyed the moment of peace, one that he liked.
Tiring was the world around him.
"Hubert…" she called, her face buried deep on his shoulder, her tears dropped onto his dirt covered skin that mingled with the dried blood.
"Yes… Ivanna," he replied, his voice much louder and energized from before.
"Promise me, Hubert. You will never do that stunt again," Ivanna said, another words of hers he couldn't understand.
"What stunt, Ivanna?" Hubert asked.
"..." Ivanna's silence replied, a few of her wept heard close to his ear.
Only then his eyes traveled beyond her figure, somewhere he gained information of, a part of his body. Bandaged, wounded, slashed, stabbed, bruised, almost everything was there.
"Aadish," he muttered, greeting his teeth.
Ivanna pulled herself back, she knew.
"No! Don't! Please, don't," she pleaded and pleaded.
Yet it was all too late, Hubert's eyes blazed with determination, one that was never before been in his eyes. Determination of revenge.
"Hu-Hubert…" she called, but it was all too late.
"Thank you, Ivanna. But I need to get going," Hubert dragged himself to the edge of the table.
"Hubert! Hear me for once, will you?!" Ivanna shouted, her meager strength pushing him back.
His wish was fueled, he won't stop.
"I thank you for everything you've done, Ivanna, but this is of my own will, don't stop me!" Hubert spoke with harshness, something also never heard by anyone.
"I-I don't want to see you like this for the fourth time, Hubert, ple-please," Ivanna's tears came down, bawling.
Mere obstacle in his way, something he cared less for.
He dropped from the edge of the table, almost tumbling forward as he felt his bone fragile and his muscle shrinked. Yet he pushed through pain and jolt, limping for the old door, one by one, step by step, another by another.
Leaving Ivanna behind.
Creak!
Bam!
He pulled the door open, the morning sunlight blinding him, yet it too was a mere shallow fence in his way. He walked out, his head swiveled around, left and right, his eyes sharp, determining the way.
Ivanna watched from the inside, her eyes hopeless, any of her words unheard by him. She tumbled to the table and sat, covering her eyes with her hands.
Hubert turned left and continued, deafening his own ears to the sound from behind.
"Je-jeez, boy, what happened to you?" a gardener said, trimming the leaves on the trees by the quiet roadside. His eyes were peering up and down at Hubert, bloodied and wounded, with his uniform ripped and tattered.
"..." Hubert paid no heed to the gardener's word.
Step…
Step…
Step…
He limped and limped. The road was familiar, the place where everything happened. Glancingly, he went past it and focused on just one place.
The cave was damp and barely lit, as usual. Quiet, until the sound of his steps broke the quietness.
"TIANNA!" Hubert roared as hard as he could.
The cave was remained still and quiet. The person he called was unanswering. But he knew, she was there.
"MASTER!" he roared yet again.
"Ugh… What?" Tianna's soft voice echoed through the cave.
"You promised and I'm here to collect that oath you made!" Hubert responded.
"Wh- Oh… Hubert, how did you get yourself in that state?" Tianna's voice asked, as if realizing.
"It doesn't matter! Fulfill your promise and I will fulfill mine!" Hubert said, uncaring of her question.
"My promise? To protect you and so on and so on?" Tianna asked.
Hubert growled, confused and bothered, displeased by her demeanor and unfulfilled promise.
"This isn't funny!" Hubert shouted.
"Hmm… to me, it is, though." Tianna replied.
"What?" Hubert asked, half raging and half baffled by the statement.
"You are the weak one, then why are you blaming me for it? Makes sense?" Tianna asked rhetorically.
"Yo-you…" he felt crushed, betrayed by who he called his master. One whom he was beginning to trust.
"You're weak, Hubert. And the fact that you blamed me for it and even your friend as well, you are a weak and daring person, the same since the start," Tianna said, baiting and baiting him even more.
Her words were loud and truthful, the truth he couldn't accept, not now, not when he needed a place the most.
"You're right, and it seems that it is better to have no master at all than a useless one," Hubert spoke, turning around, his heart stabbed from behind, his presence uncared. There was only one way out, a way he wanted to pursue, leaving the place and using his own hands and methods for his revenge.
Even if he didn't know how, he knew that there must be a way, a way that had no need for a useless master he was denouncing.
"Restringere," Tianna's chant heard in the cave.
He was stopped in his tracks, his right foot, shaky, still afloat in the air. So was the fire of the torch attached to the cave's wall, ensnared by an invisible power.
His voice coming out not as he too was restrained by an invisible chain, forbidding him from any movement.
"Ha…funny, an ant thought himself to be a lion. Barging in and disturbing, roaring and shouting. Funny indeed," Tianna's voice echoed.
Hubert growled, his body shaking, desiring freedom, yet he was powerless in the face of such magic.
"Think and repent of your words. Only then will I free you, c o w a r d,"
His body was still, yet his ears were deafened, and his vision darkened upon hearing the word.
He was instantly sucked into the mana mind. Not at the usual environment of nature, but now in the comfortable and friendly void.
"What? I-I'm free," he asked confusedly. He felt his strength and mobility returning back to him.
Confusion and wrath mingled with each other. Yet wrath overpowered anything else.
"No! This is not the time to be here," he said to himself. His anger had yet to dissipate.
"Hubert…" he heard a call.
Hubert turned around, to the source of the familiar voice, too familiar, perhaps.
"Hubert…" another call.
His eyes widened, he knew as he stared sharply at the unending darkness that called for him. The voice was his own, distorted, and weird.
"Take… me! Yourself!" his own voice echoed through infinity.
Hubert walked forward, approaching the voice at the edge. The infinity seemingly finite and the unending seemingly ending, at the center of his mana mind was the end, and at the edge too was the center.
The beginning and the end.
Existing and non-existing.
"Void,"