Moyako, sixteen years ago…
With Brunhildt allying with Mordran, it put enormous pressure on her and Reyna to hold the line in the north. The two of them, along with their company of soldiers, could block Brunhildt’s advance as they tried to take control of the main port in King Tide’s Cape.
Of course, the Valkyries of Brunhildt could try to reach Duranell by air with their wings, but if they did, Moyako would simply set the skies ablaze.
If they somehow managed to withstand the heat, then Reyna’s storm of Dragon Rain would drag them back to the ground to be torn apart.
The both of them were indeed a truly unstoppable pair of warriors and a nightmare for anyone to face against alone.
But then, a day came where the two of them were finally giving them so much pressure that their entire advancing army was retreating back to Brunhildt.
There was talk of Mordran preparing a new offensive that would put both their own soldiers and any allies at risk if any remained on the battlefield for too long during their next advancement. Yet, at the same time there seemed to be a truce declared between Arobynn Aphstadd and Queen Hylla, which was the cause of the Valkyries’ retreat.
Something about it bothered Moyako as she didn’t trust Queen Hylla to agree to a truce without some kind of ulterior motive.
And so, despite the so called truce, of which Brunhildt would remove its forces from the area in their attempt to take King Tide’s Cape, Moyako scoped out the area to ensure that the ceasefire would remain unbroken.
For three days, it seemed that Queen Hylla had stayed true to her word of not advancing during the truce.
As she continued to pace around the port town, Reyna followed beside her vigilantly with her spear in hand.
As they were about to finish their rounds, Ruvick appeared from behind and called out to them.
“I would like to borrow Reyna for a minute, if you don’t mind. I have something urgent I wish to discuss with her,” he said, and although there was no issue with that, the expression on his face worried her.
There was a sense of panicked urgency in his eyes that she had not seen before and she wondered what could possibly be the cause. What could make a man of such outrageous power appear worried?
Reyna turned to face her as if asking if she would be alright and Moyako nodded.
As the two of them started talking, Reyna’s expression became increasingly more agitated and nervous until she fell completely silent, even going pale.
Then, Ruvick said a few more words, to which Reyna hesitantly nodded to before returning to Moyako’s side.
“What happened?”
“I don’t want to talk about it right now. Lets just finish our rounds and return to camp,” she said quickly, avoiding the subject.
“Okay…,” she replied warily.
When the day came to an end, and the two of them were walking back to the barracks, Reyna froze.
Moyako stopped as well as she turned around and said, “Is something wrong? Come on, if we don’t hurry back our food will get cold.”
“I’m not coming with you,” she replied.
Moyako’s voice was caught in her throat for a moment as she thought she misheard her and said, “I hope you’re joking. Ash may not be that great of a fighter, but his food is amazing. We need to hurry or it’ll all be-”
“Moyako, I am not coming with you. In fact, I’m leaving. I have…matters of my own I need to take care of,” she said as the expression on her face darkened.
“You can’t be serious…we’re in the middle of a war, and you want to just leave? Here and now? What could be more important-”
“Cassiel’s head mounted on my spear,” she said with steel in her voice as her eyes flashed gold for a moment, reflecting the nature of her magic and showing her anger.
She was serious. She was really going to leave the war over a grudge against one man.
“Can’t you wait until after this war is over before you go hunting after this man? What good would it do to go after him now if the whole world falls to Mordran or Brunhildt?”
“Win or lose, this world doesn’t matter that much to me anymore. As long as I can hunt Cassiel down and drive this spear into his chest, I’ll take accept any victor, whether its you, or them. It doesn’t matter to me. In fact, I fail to see why it should matter to you. This isn’t your world, so why do you bother caring enough about it to fight for it? What ever happened to searching for that man, Marcus Wright you called him. Does it even matter to you anymore?”
“Of course it still matters to me, but I wouldn’t sacrifice the fate of an entire kingdom to chase after him! That’s selfish and heartless! What about these people’s lives?!” Moyako shouted at her.
“I’ve lived long enough to watch thousands of kingdoms rise and fall, all of which had resulted in countless deaths that had little meaning in the end. If Duranell wins, fine. Good for them, but it is no longer my concern. It is time for me to chase after my own goal. Farewell, for now,” she said as she turned around and vanished with a flash of light, leaving Moyako to stare at the emptiness she left behind.
Soon after Reyna disappeared, the truce between Brunhildt and Duranell was broken and the Valkyries resumed their assault as they attempted to take the port town, which left Moyako to be the only force strong enough to push them back.
She continued to fend them off for weeks until one day, three golden winged Valkyries appeared with Geirolul leading the charge.
Under normal circumstances, she would have won and beaten them back quite easily. Unfortunately, they had managed to blindside her when they brought Lorra Lazuli onto the battlefield alongside them.
The Dark Elf champion had blotted out the sun and swallowed her up in an unending darkness which gave Geirolul an opening to land a killing blow.
Not only was she captured, so too was her comrades as they were carried off to Brunhildt to be tortured and killed.
Yet try as they might, Moyako lived up to her name as the Immortal Phoenix, enduring months of nonstop torture and repeated attempts to permanently end her life only to be met with failure until Raum appeared in the dungeon she was held in and rescued her.
In all that time that they spent carving up her body, she would not forget how Reyna had abandoned her to her fate.
Reyna now stood before her, for the first time in sixteen years, to face off against her in Lycea’s arena.
Her appearance was generally the same.
She stood at six foot two, with well toned muscles all across her body, blonde choppy hair, and red eyes. Scars in the shape of dragons wrapped around her forearms.
She wore a hooded vest and tank top made of dragon skin with Black Iron greaves and cuisses.
“You should know that no matter what happens after this match, nothing will change between you and I,” Moyako said as she pulled her katana from its sheathe.
Reyna looked back at her with regret for a moment before she shook her head and steeled her resolve.
She then reached her hand out to her side and said, “Lafael.”
With a flash of golden light, a spear of dragon bone appeared next to her. It radiated so much power just by existing that the firm ground around it vibrated and turned to powder.
Reyna had once told her the story of that spear and the name of the Archdragon it had once been a part of.
Lafael was the name of the Archdragon of Light, the twin to Malthael, the Archdragon of the Abyss.
She had said that the two of them were among the first children of the Dragon Goddess Akatosh. The two of them were born from the same egg as it landed in a pool of blood belonging to two opposing primordial gods.
While in the process of hatching, Malthael took in the spiritual energy from the blood of Erebus, while Lafael took in the blood of God.
While normal Archdragons are formed through the process of constantly cannibalizing their own kind, consuming the souls of other dragons, and absorbing their power into them to achieve sentience, the twin dragons hatched from their eggs with sentience already ingrained into them.
For billions of years, the two dragons fought with each other, reflecting the endless struggle between God and Erebus, as the primordial energy in their souls overpowered their draconic impulses.
At one point, the two of them decided to forego fighting with one another and go their separate ways.
The two of them then burrowed deep into the earth and hibernated deep inside the earth’s crust for millions of years while the planet was still cooling before it could become inhabitable.
Many of the dragons had followed their example as they too buried themselves in the ground until the world had given birth to other forms of life to hunt.
During the great flood that God called down upon Lucifer, the gods, and all of humanity, the catastrophe jostled the creatures awake from their slumber, resulting in an era of dragons lasting for tens of thousands of years.
Reyna alone put a stop to that era as she hunted down millions of dragons, feasting on their hearts and consuming their souls. Losing herself to Dragon Sickness as she became ravenous, lustful, and murderous to everything and everyone around her, but holding onto her one goal.
To gain enough power to hunt and kill Lafael, the Archdragon of Light. If she could kill him and consume his soul, she could gain the power necessary to stand on the same level as a Seraphim Archangel and kill Cassiel.
With the souls of millions of dragons and countless different types of magics contained within her flesh, she killed Lafael with her bare hands and consumed his heart.
After gaining the power of Lafael’s soul, which was strong enough to overpower all the dragons within her being, but too weak to maintain his consciousness as she crushed his mind, she took one of his bones and fashioned a spear out of it.
If Moyako had never appeared in this world, then undoubtedly Reyna would be worthy of the title of ‘The Strongest Woman in the World’.
“Are you sure that you want this fight?” Reyna asked her with an unsure expression on her face.
Moyako’s eyes narrowed in anger as she said, “I am not the person you should be asking that question to.”
“Very well…,” Reyna said quietly as she looked up at the announcer, waiting for him to call the start if the first match of the fourth bracket.
When the announcer did speak, he said, “Before we start the next match, there is something important that needs to be addressed. Due to the...volatile nature of the most recent battles, its been decided that the previous battlefield is not fit to handle the enormous power released by our combatants. For that reason, they have been redesigned to handle a nigh-limitless level of strength and power. Rather than manifesting a space containing a solar system, instead it creates a plane of land that expands and loops on itself infinitely. If you attempt to break through the earth or the sky, the space will warp so that you reappear back onto the battlefield. This is to more easily contain the destructive power of your battles and prolong it.”
“Useless information! Call it already!” Moyako shouted as she pointed her sword in the direction of the announcer’s box.
“R-Right. I apologize. Let the first match of the fourth bracket begin!”
A brief moment passed as the spatial battlefield expanded around them, and unlike before where you could see the horizon in the distance due to the curvature of the planet, instead it stretched on infinitely just as the announcer said.
This was a battlefield suited for beings such as them to release their full strength without restraint.
Reyna then sighed and said, “Listen. I won’t take it easy on you just beca-”
“Amaterasu-no-Mikoto,” Moyako said, cutting her off as she reached her left hand out in front of her, snapped her fingers, and hit Reyna with the might of an exploding star.
With the chanting of the Sun Goddesses’ name, so too did her appearance begin the change.
She then reached for the mask on her waste and put it on as it changed into the form of an Okami wolf. Its color resembled that of white porcelain with red stripes.
Strips of cloth made of spiritual energy were woven around her body, colored white and red to reflect the rising sun of Japan and the magnificence of Amaterasu’s glory.
Her sword as well seemed to change as spiritual energy surrounded its blade, changing its appearance from a curved katana with cherry blossom branches engraved into the flat of the blade to a straight sword of blackened steel and a crescent shaped pommel.
The sword’s name was Ame-no-Murakumo-no-Tsurugi, or Heavenly Sword of Gathering Clouds.
The aftermath of Moyako’s attack was so great that it incinerated the surface of the battlefield that they were standing on. Although the rest of the battlefield’s surface was undoubtedly still there, somewhere in the distance, there was now an enormous chasm below her as she fell through it.
She continued to fall until she could see the light around her shift and bend as space became distorted and she could see a new landmass appear under her.
When she landed, she found Reyna coughing and groaning from being hit by her attack. Her skin steamed from the heat and energy that had collided with her body. An aura of flickering golden light shone all across her body to protect her from the blast and keep her clothes together.
“On what authority do you believe you can suggest that there is any reason for you to ‘go easy on me’?” Moyako said, with Amaterasu-no-Mikoto’s voice and personality resonating with her own.
Reyna looked up at her apologetically and said, “You’re right. That was foolish of me.”
She got back on her feet, gripped her spear as she said, “Lafael’s Limitless Radiance. Release all Chasmic Seals.”
“The might of your soul is nearly as mighty as Malthael’s own…it is no wonder you managed to kill Lafael. Perhaps Gabriel’s blessing did more for you than you realized,” Moyako said, to which Reyna’s eyes scrunched in confusion.
“If you know of Gabriel and the true extent of Malthael’s power, then you know the full scope of my own.”
“It is of no concern to me,” she replied as she swept her sword through the air at her side, and as she did, the enormous pressure reflecting the mass of a star was released from it, shattering the ground once more.
Reyna watched this display of power, undaunted, as she levitated in the air and stared back at Moyako.
“What is it that you hope to achieve by fighting and defeating me in battle? Haven’t you found Marcus Wright already?”
“It is I who should be asking you that question. What is your reason for being here if you’re goal is to hunt down and kill Cassiel?”
“I am here to evaluate Marcus’s strength and to act as a challenge to overcome if he wants to win his bet against Ruvick. As he is right now, he is still too weak.”
“If that is all, then I suggest you yield here and now. Your presence in this tournament is unnecessary as I intend to defeat Marcus myself. I will not have you stand in my way,” Moyako stated bluntly, to which Reyna smiled.
“Is that so? If that’s how you feel about all this, then you should defeat me first. If you can do that much, then-”
“I will not repeat myself. Yield now, or die,” Moyako said as her power skyrocketed to such an extent that it eclipsed Reyna’s own and dwarfed it.
Reyna began to go pale at sensing the sheer scale of it as she stuttered, “Y-You’re serious? You would go this far for one man?”
Moyako reached out her left hand once more, preparing to snap her fingers as she said, “You have your goals just as I too, have my own. My goal does not end in finding Marcus, but rather in bringing him home. Not you, nor Ruvick, nor anyone else will stop me.”
Her face fell as she looked at Moyako with a guilty expression on her face as she said, “A-Alright. I yield to you. I won’t stand in your way.”
Her spear vanished and she resealed her magic just as Moyako did the same and the battlefield collapsed around them.
The audience watching their exchange seemed confused by the outcome but did not voice any dissatisfaction as Moyako was declared the winner by default.
Reyna then walked towards her and said, “I’ve told you my history with Cassiel and what he did to my parents and village, so you know full well what my motivations are and how far I’m willing to go to kill him. Yet for Marcus, you never explained to me or Ruvick what he means to you. Why would you go so far for him?”
“You’ll find out soon enough, after I beat him,” she said with a deep tone as she turned around and left the arena.
As she was approaching the waiting room, she felt something odd going on inside. A presence that felt not unlike Marcus’s own, yet she knew that the only one who should be inside waiting for their match to begin was Camilla.
She knocked on the door and heard, “Come in.”
When she walked inside, she saw only Camilla inside, yet that feeling she had earlier did not pass.
“So you won again then, huh? Only one more match and the two of us will be fighting next!” she said with an excited look in her eyes.
“Ah…y-yeah. I wish you luck,” she said, trying to force a smile.
But as Camilla walked past her to make it to her match, she noticed a brief flash of red light appear in her eyes before it quickly faded and they returned to their usual green color.
Moyako turned around suddenly in shock as she watched Camilla walk away, not sensing what had happened, but said nothing to stop her.
“Good luck,” she said once again, as a feeling of dread overcame her.