Shapes Who You Are

He cut down the impersonators without remorse. Their lack of weapons and Divine Energy made it easy. As the bodies hit the ground, he turned to the back of the Fractured army. Earlier, during the effusive speech of the doppelgangers, he had noticed a small thread of Divine Energy connecting them to him, and him to something in the distance.

Surprisingly, it stayed whole under Fate's aura, barely corroding despite how flimsy it appeared. He had followed that trail all the way to someone at the back of the army, out of the range of his aura.

His guess was a Personification. Only those higher-Leveled than himself had a chance to keep their Divine Energy from crumbling under his aura. If his hunch was right, it could prove troublesome for the Venlanz forces. They were already outnumbered in terms of Embodiments; being outclassed as well could be fatal.

He was sure that the only reason he could see through it so easily was his near-constant use of his Manifest Power. While he was intangible, any foreign Divine Energy within him was quickly eaten away by his own.

He glanced to the front lines, hesitant. If he pursued the Personification, it would take the fight out of his aura's range, allowing both sides to use their Manifest Powers once more. Considering the fact that every single warrior in the Fractured army was a psychic at the least, it felt like a horrible idea.

Then something happened that made his decision for him. The once-clear sky overhead turned gray and cloudy, rumbling with thunder. Fate noticed one of the soldiers surrounding him turned downcast, a tear rolling down his cheek as he looked at the men Fate had killed.

Then a bolt of lightning came down from the skies and smote him, burning him to ash in an instant. A light breeze kicked up, scattering the ashes to the four winds.

'Another Mockingbird?' Fate thought. 'And another Personification, based on the strength of the Divine Energy that killed that guy.' Two Personifications wasn't good. He used Null, dashing through the encirclement toward where he traced the Divine Energy. The Venlanz forces would have to hold their own without his help for a while.

"You're killing our own men, Hedra," a man in long, flowing red robes said.

Despite his words, his tone carried no anger or remorse, instead sounding like a mother lovingly scolding her child. His hair was long and light pink, flowing down his back and shoulders, and his handsome face was rendered somewhat sinister by his crimson eyes.

"We've trained them for weeks to control their emotions," the woman next to him said dejectedly.

She was wearing robes similar to the man, her deep, dark blue eyes like two endless oceans set within the void of her long black hair. Her bangs were so long they went past her cheeks, exposing only her eyes and nose. "Why did they not take it seriously, Micheil?"

"I don't know, Hedra. Embodiments of Emotion shouldn't have needed training in the first place," the pink-haired man, Micheil, said soothingly. "It is their fault, not yours."

Hedra stiffened, parting her bangs with her hands to reveal her face in full detail. She was a beautiful woman, no older than twenty-five, her face an artwork of gentle slopes and pale skin.

"Someone is coming toward us," she said quietly. "And it is not one of ours."

Micheil followed her gaze, looking through the Fractured army and spotting a man in white armor over black clothes, a sword in his hand as he ran through the Fractured as if they weren't even there.

Micheil and Hedra were at the very back of the army, the range of their Manifest Powers so great that they had no need to danger themselves as the vanguard. As such, they were supposed to be completely safe, even as their brothers and sisters were mowed down by General Ferdind's Dark orbs and Venlanz's superior weaponry.

Micheil looked past the man heading straight for them, focusing on the battlefront. The warriors on both sides, who for some reason were previously fighting with swords and hands instead of the Divine gift they were born with, were once more flinging rocks with their Divine Reach, conjuring Fire and Wind and Light with their Manifestations and forcing Emotion onto their enemies.

Micheil wasn't a fool. He immediately made a connection between the armies' forced hand-to-hand combat and this man, who was just now breaking out of the horde of Fractured. A few of the Fractured turned around, taking swings at this interloper, only for their fists to glide through. Whoever attacked him was quickly met with a sword to the throat.

Fate stalked purposefully forward, the bodies of six men falling behind him. He took in his new surroundings.

On the other side of the Fractured army, he was a few hundred feet away from the walls of Frendnann, on a grassy plain with no trees in sight. A section of the wall was now a smooth stone mound on the ground about five feet tall, having melted into a liquid and then cooled after the fire-using Fractured died.

With this new opening, Fate could see inside the city, which was a mass of flaming buildings and screaming people. The citizens of Frendnann ran around in their confusion, a few Embodiments of water trying to douse the out-of-control fires. They were succeeding, but slowly. By the time they finished extinguishing one house, another had burned to the ground.

Fate noticed a glimmer of white down one of the streets in the city, a host of armored guards rounding a corner and marching toward the gap in the wall. He turned to the two Personifications who were staring him down, grimacing at their odd expressions.

The woman on the right held her hair away from her face with her hands like parted curtains, gazing at Fate with immense sadness. The other, a man, gave Fate such a loving, fatherly look that he nearly threw up in disgust.

"It's true what they say, I guess. Your Manifestation shapes who you are," Fate said to no one in particular.