Ren saw the sudden realization in her tear-filled eyes. The healthy, vibrant color instantly drained from his face, leaving him deathly pale. He knew exactly what time it was.
“No… no, Miki, please don’t,” Ren mumbled, his voice fragile and trembling. He took a fearful step backward, raising his hands in defense. “Not now… We just made it through that heavy battle. We survived, right? We are finally here.”
But it was already too late. The deep, bottled-up fear, the years of lonely torture inside those freezing, dark chambers, and the horror of constantly dying struck all at once. The mask fell away. Miki’s face distorted into a grimace of pure pain. Her lower lip trembled violently, and the first thick tears rolled down her cheeks.
“I… I can’t do this anymore, Ren,” she burst out. It was a heart-wrenching scream that pierced to the bone. Tears streamed over her chin as she desperately clawed her hands into her hair. “I was so scared! Every day I died all over again… every damn day I thought I would never see you guys again! I don’t want this constant fighting anymore. I just want to go to a normal school for once, like the other kids. To just sit quietly in a classroom, Ren. To live a normal life, exactly like the fairy tales in my books!”
Ren tried to clamp his jaws together and keep his shoulders straight like a true warrior, but the breaking point had been reached. Hearing her voice caused something to snap deep inside. His lips trembled, and hot tears shot from his eyes, flowing scalding over his cheeks.
“It’s… it’s honestly just too much altogether,” he choked out, sobbing and gasping for breath. He completely lost control over his breathing, his voice, and his shaking body. “We are only fourteen… Why do we have to do all of this? Why did we have to go through that absolute hell?”
He buried his face in his hands and sank to his knees on the steel floor. The loud, unchecked outbursts of two young children broken by trauma cut through the suddenly quiet hall.
The entire room fell into a chilling silence. The merry clinking of heavy mugs stopped abruptly.
Silarias and Nyx looked at each other with a telling glance. The tough, unbeatable attitude dropped away from the group in an instant. Everyone swallowed heavily. They tried with all their might to hold themselves together, but memories flashed through their minds at a murderous pace. Aurelius stared tightly at the floor, squeezing his eyes shut, while Jane, her jaw trembling, crossed her arms tightly and blinked away a hot tear. Only Beat sat in the background, loudly blowing his nose into an enormous cloth.
Snotter.
Silarias and Nyx walked with slow steps toward Miki and Ren. Silarias laid a broad, protective hand on Ren’s shoulder. The fist that was just ready for battle now felt warm and supportive, though his own eyes glinted with pent-up moisture.
“It doesn’t matter,” Silarias said, his voice heavy and faltering. “It is a lot. It is too much for anyone.”
As he spoke, images flashed past in his mind: the carefree birthday that turned into total chaos due to the suction of the portal; the suffocating Hellverse where they had to run for their lives; the panic when Omeboros leveled the entire city; the heat of the Everlasting Forge. A chain reaction of a ruined childhood.
Nyx knelt beside the weeping Miki, tightly gripping her small, trilling hands. Tears now flowed freely over her own cheeks, slicing through the icy emptiness that the Obsidian Warden had left deep inside her.
Nyx thought of her own training with Vespera, the exhausting hours where Silarias sat right behind her as support. She saw her own birthday again, the overwhelming power of the Moon Queen, and the emotional reunion after they were dragged through that portal alongside Juro. And then the demanding battle against Lady Ouroboros. She looked at the broken girl before her and saw a flash of the past: the moment Miki was much younger, pure and uninhibited, walking straight up to the wild fire spirit and managing to calm the creature with her gentleness. And now look at her sitting here.
“Just let it out,” Nyx said, her voice soft and faltering as her thumb wiped away Miki’s tears. “You have both been so bizarrely strong. You don’t have to hold it together right now. You haven’t lost your fairy tale, Miki. Remember that.”
Nicola stepped forward, shaky and unstable. His white-hot eyes, which just a moment ago read the kille, emotionless data of the world, looked fragile and dead tired. Now that the adrenaline had faded, the realization hit him that he was finally free after all those years. His thoughts shot back to the dark beginning: how he ended up at the cold laboratories of EtherCorps, captured and abused for his powers. He saw the meeting with Lyn again, and the suffocating feeling of the thick chains to which he was bound like an animal.
“Yeah… truly…” Nicola brought out with effort. His hands shook so hard that he could barely get his glasses straight on his nose, a desperate attempt to hide the tears springing behind the lenses.
On top of his head, Blitz began to feel the emotional storm as well. The creature collapsed sadly, losing its bright neon color, and transformed into a small, grey rain-cloud that softly began to drip out of sadness. The entire Bastion held its breath at the sight of so much pent-up childhood trauma.
Until Beat suddenly stood up with a jerk. He slammed the cloth onto the table with a loud smack, threw both arms wide into the air, and let out a raw scream that went straight through to the bone.
“HEHE! PHEW! TRUE NOBODIES! ALL OF US!” Beat roared with a wild, proud grin, even as tears still glinted on his cheeks.
That single shout was the spark in the powder keg. In a fraction of a second, the withheld sadness flipped into an explosive hype.
“YES! TRUE NOBODIES!” Silarias screamed along, ramming his fist straight into the air as the adrenaline shot through his veins again.
“FOREVER!” Aurelius roared after him, standing up wildly and smashing his heavy mug against the wooden table.
Jane, Nicola, Nyx, Lyn, Izumaru, Balamore—everyone in every corner of the hall began to shout it out from pure release. Fists went into the air rhythmically, tables shook, and the walls of the Bastion seemed ready to burst from the raw energy and untamed pride. Miki and Ren wiped away their tears with large grins and now screamed along, thrusting their fists into the air, stronger than ever before.
Master Ometol and the other four legends stood by with open mouths. They did not know what was hitting them. The insane switch from pure bloodlust, to deep sadness, to this crazy euphoria caught them completely off guard. They looked at each other with wide eyes full of respect, smiled broadly, and then, slowly but surely, raised their own heavy mugs high into the air.
As the last echoes of their proud roaring died away against the massive copper walls of the hall, Master Ometol stepped forward with a mild, fatherly smile. He clapped his hands softly and looked at the gang kindly.
“Well, the stomachs are filled and the hearts are emptied, young warriors,” he spoke with his calm, deep voice. “It is now truly time to put on decent, clean clothes and take your well-deserved rest. The rooms upstairs are ready.”
The entire group stopped moving immediately. A short, comical silence fell. Silarias, Nyx, Aurelius, and the rest slowly turned their heads and looked Master Ometol and the remaining legends straight in the eye with an extremely dry, deadpan stare.
“Uh… just take rest like we normally would do?” Silarias asked with a hesitant voice, raising an eyebrow.
Master Ometol looked somewhat surprised from the young gang to the two temperamental women beside him, scratched his chin thoughtfully, and then focused his gaze back on Silarias. “Sure? I think?” he answered with a questioning tone.
That was the starting gun for a new wave of cheerfulness. With loud shouts, boisterous laughter, and renewed energy, the group broke up into small clusters.
Nyx did not hesitate for a second. She took a big sprint, ran straight at Silarias, and tightly grabbed his broad arm. Without giving him a second to protest, she began dragging him toward the stairs of the bedrooms with force.
“I am dead tired and we have to get up damn early tomorrow!” she shouted over her shoulder, while Silarias had to hobble along with her, laughing and stumbling.
Aan de andere kant van de tafel herhaalde de geschiedenis zich meteen. Jane greep Aurelius bij zijn kraag.
“No excuses, come along, we have to get up early!” she commanded fiercely, while Aurelius, with rolling eyes and a deep sigh, allowed himself to be dragged halfway across the floor.
Everywhere in the hall, cozy groups formed, pushing and pulling each other toward the sleeping quarters. Lyn walked over to Nicola with a soft smile, took his hand, and made sure he walked upstairs calmly, while Blitz on top of his head was already starting to clear up a little.
Meanwhile, Apollo and Beat stood grinning broadly at the exit of the hall. They turned around and began waving their arms wildly and over-enthusiastically toward Ren, who was still standing a bit dazed in the middle of the hall.
“STORY TIME?!” Apollo and Beat roared in unison with a pair of gigantic, hyperactive children’s eyes.
Ren’s eyes became as large as saucers and the pure hype immediately shot back into his young body. “YES!!! STORY TIME!!!” he screamed completely possessed with pure enthusiasm. Without looking back, he took a sprint and ran hard along with the duo.
Only Miki remained behind in the gigantic space. She stood there entirely alone with her arms crossed, staring at the remaining legends of the Silicones with an extremely dry, deadpan, and uninterested look, as if she were wondering what kind of madhouse she had landed in this time.
But her quiet did not last long. Ren suddenly came running back into the hall at top speed, skidded across the smooth floor right in front of her nose, and immediately grabbed her tightly by her wrist.
“Nah, where are you staying all this time?! That means it is story time for you too!!” he cried out, completely hyped. Miki could not even protest or let out a sigh; she was dragged right into the hallway in one jolt by Ren’s enthusiastic pulling force, straight after the rest.
Soon, the upper floor of the Bastion filled with the warm, soothing atmosphere of the night, with small snippets audible everywhere of how everyone was finally coming to rest after those crushing days. Through the wooden cracks of the doors sounded the cute, heavily exaggerated, and heroic stories of Apollo and Beat, who used loud hand gestures and funny voices to mimic the most bizarre adventures for a breathlessly listening Ren and a secretly giggling Miki. One door down, Lyn and Nicola were already completely knocked out on their large, soft beds, totally shut down by the emotional release. The heavy snoring of Aurelius and the quiet breathing of Jane also made it clear that they had gone completely KO the moment their heads hit the pillow.
But then, the perspective shifted slowly to the room at the end of the hallway, where Silarias and Nyx had just lain down together to sleep in the deep silence. Both lay motionless on their backs, staring at the dark ceiling, but although their bodies were exhausted, their minds were anything but. Both felt the unrest burning in their blood.