Chapter Eighty Four
"Akira!"
A male voice filled my ears while my vision dimd as vines erged from the ground binding Akira and pulling her away.
"Haaah!" I gasped, clutching onto my chest trying to stand straight.
"Elder brother Noctrayel!" Ignis yelled in his frozen state that the Spirit King had finally showed up.
I lifted my face as my gaze was graced with the blurred vision of five different n. Most probably, the five spirit kings. Air, Water, Fire, Ice and Nature.
"Let go, Noctrayel! You knew it! You knew it, didn't you? Our daughter... My daughter... is alive! How could you abandon your own kin, Noctrayel!?" Akira yelled, her voice echoing.
"Akira... It was for her own safety."
Noctyrael's voice wasn't the roar I expected. It was a low, resonant thrum, like the wind moving through an ancient forest. He stood at the center of the four other n, his presence so grounded it felt like the entire fire valley revolved around him. His hair was a cascade of silver and moss-green, and his eyes were deep, swirling pools of erald light.
"Really?!" Akira shrieked, her nine tails thrashing against the glowing vines that pinned her to the soot. "Was it for my own safety then, that you pinned to the ground like a common beast?"
"Yes! It was!" Noctyrael stepped forward, the earth blooming into life beneath his bare feet despite the desolation and soot. "If you had dug too deep into his mories, you would have been turned to ash like the Weaver of Low Paths!"
...Wait. What?
I clutched my chest, my lungs burning as I tried to process that. I didn't turn anyone to ashes. The Weaver definitely went poof by herself. Isn't that right, Sysi?
[Ping!]
[Definitely. Host didn't do anything.]
Yeah!
"Hey! Don't accuse falsely! I didn't do anything to that Weaver!"
"Silence, mortal!" Ignis barked, his orange hair flaring into actual tongues of fla as he strained against his frozen state. "The Weaver was an entity of the Void-Paths. She doesn't just 'go poof' because of a stiff breeze! Only a direct rejection from a higher Source could have incinerated her existence. You are definitely soone sent by that Evil Empress."
Haah... It's impossible to get through this guy.
Noctyrael didn't look at Ignis. Neither did the other four n. Their eyes were fixed solely on the space between my brows, narrowing as if they were trying to calculate a sum that refused to add up.
"Noctyrael, I can't see through," a man muttered. He looked like an older, much more elegant version of Ignis, with hair like liquid gold and eyes that glowed like molten copper.
He definitely must be the Spirit King of Fire, Vyranthos.
"Neither do I," said a man whose form seed to vibrate with the hum of a thousand storms. His ssy, wind-swept hair shifted between shades of grey and pale violet.
He definitely must be the Spirit King of Air, Zephryx.
"Nor do I?" added a third, whose hair was as white as a mountain peak in mid-winter. He was draped in furs that seed to grow frost despite the surrounding heat, and his gaze was as sharp and cold as a jagged icicle.
He definitely must be the Spirit King of Ice, Cryovael.
"Hey, Noctyrael! Rember the Lord's last words!"
The fourth man, with hair the color of a deep, midnight ocean and skin that had a translucent, pearly quality to it, stepped forward. His voice sounded like the shifting of deep currents. "Just ask him his na. Everything else will clear up on its own."
...Clear what?
"I agree with Abyrion, Noctyrael," Vyranthos murmured, his copper eyes never leaving mine.
" too!" Zephryx chirped, his voice echoing like a gust of air.
"I do too," Cryovael finished, his voice a chilling whisper that made the soot on the ground crackle.
I stood there, feeling like a specin under a microscope.
My na? They want my na? Sysi, what's going on? The way these five powerhouses are looking at is making feel like my na was the key to a door I wasn't sure I wanted to open.
[Ping!]
[Just tell them this body's na, host.]
Are you sure that will work, Sysi?
...
How can you just abandon like that?!
"Human," Noctyrael said, pulling out of my head as his voice dropped to a low, reverent tone that made the hair on my arms stand up. "Tell us. What is your na?"
The weight of his gaze was like a physical pressure against my skull, making my thoughts feel sluggish and tangled. I opened my mouth, but the answer felt like it was miles away.
"I don't know?"
"You don't know?" Noctyrael's erald eyes flickered, the nebulae within them swirling faster as his expression shifted from I know the answer to a simring, dangerous confusion.
The vines holding Akira pulsed with a sympathetic rhythm to his heartbeat, tightening just enough around his wife to make her hiss in frustration.
...Are they into bondage or sothing?
"A man with no na is either a god, a corpse, or a liar. Which are you, mortal?"
Haah... What's the point in lying when they'll find out either way? These guys are literal forces of nature. I shouldn't dig my grave any deeper than it has already beco, especially since the ground is already moving beneath .
"A liar?"
"Are you asking or telling , mortal?" Noctyrael's brow twitched, a spark of pure erald light dancing across his knuckles.
"Telling you?" I replied, the rising inflection betraying my utter lack of confidence. All my Archmage energy evaporating.
Honestly though, even if I was an Archmage like my previous life. I'm no match for a Spirit King in the Spirit Realm. Archmages are like top of human chain. Not top of Spirit Realm chain.
"Are you serious?" He leaned in closer, his scent of crushed pine and ancient earth filling my lungs. The sheer absurdity of the mont seed to be short-circuiting his divine brain.
"Yes?"
"What is wrong with you?!" he hissed, the frustration finally boiling over. "Just end it as an answer, not a question, mortal!"
"Okay?"
Noctyrael pressed his lips into a thin, irritated line, staring at with the kind of look a professor gives a student who just tried to eat their own exam paper. He looked genuinely pained, as if my inability to make a declarative statent was causing physical damage to the fabric of reality.
"It is okay," he gritted out, taking a deep, stabilizing breath that made the flowers around his feet wilt and bloom in rapid succession.
"Okay."
Am I receiving grammar lessons from a Spirit King?!
"Better! So, tell once more, without the inflection. What are you?"
"A liar?"
Noctyrael just blinked, completely dumbfounded. He stayed like that for a good few seconds, his mouth slightly agape, looking like a statue of a god who had just been told the universe was actually made of cheese. Behind him, the other four spirits shared a collective look of absolute bewildernt.
Vyranthos, the Spirit King of Fire, rubbed his temples with his gold-flecked fingers. "Noctyrael, I think we broke him."
"Honestly, I think he's just dumb." Cryovael added.
"I'm vouching for peculiar!" Zephryx chirped.
"How can a being be this... indecisive?" Abyrion squinted his eyes at .
"It's not indecision!" I barked, finally finding a bit of spine finally, feeling offended at Abyrion's words. "It's a survival chanism! Do you know how many tis I've been nearly killed today? My brain is currently seventy percent soot and thirty percent 'please don't go into my brain and kill later.' You want a firm answer? Fine. I'm a liar. I lied about the robe, I lied about how I got here. But, I didn't lie about Lune."
"What's the point in playing that ga when you're going to confess that you're lying?"
Noctyrael's voice was as dry as parchnt, his erald eyes boring into mine with a look of fatigue. It was the look of a man who had spent three thousand years pondering the mysteries of the universe, only to be confronted by a mortal who couldn't even commit to a proper deception.
"I don't know, man," I sighed, the weight of the day finally crushing whatever was left of my pride. I slumped my shoulders, feeling every bit the exhausted babysitter I was. "I'm honestly tired."
"Then just make it quick," Noctyrael commanded, his voice vibrating through the soles of my feet. The patience of a Spirit King was clearly a finite resource, and I was draining the reservoir.
"Fine," I muttered, bracing myself.
"So," he leaned in, the scent of ancient pine and rain-drenched earth intensifying. "What is your na?"
"Veryon Halcrest."
The na felt heavy on my tongue, but as soon as it left my lips, the five spirits didn't look impressed. If anything, they looked even more annoyed. Zephryx let out a sharp whistle of air through his teeth, and Vyranthos's copper eyes flared with a flick of heat.
"Not that!" Noctyrael snapped, his hand twitching as if he were fighting the urge to turn into a topiary."What's the na of the soul residing in that body?"
Of course, they knew...
I sighed, tired.
"Kion Yeun."
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