"Why?" Kurt asked, taking some weight off the foot he had on Conrad's chest. "What are you trying to get with all this?"

  Despite his current position, Conrad somehow managed to snort derisively. "What do you think I'm trying to get, numbnuts? I want the Red Aura for myself!"

  "Power," said Kurt, the word feeling heavy and slimy on his tongue. His breath grew ragged, and he had to compose himself before speaking again. "Why did you even join the order then, if power's all you wanted? What were you to get by plying around an orphanage in the middle of the woods?"

  "Hell if I know," Conrad answered, shrugging to the best of his ability. "My contact in that spooky cult we've been chasing told me to. Said it would put me in a great position to eventually find one of the other Auras." Conrad smiled. Smiled smugly. "Seems like he was right-uhckf!"

  Conrad heaved, his upper body shooting forward as though crunching. Kurt's foot flew from its new spot at the traitor's stomach, hitting the blond in the mouth, before settling once again atop his chest.

  "Don't get cocky, you goddamn rat. Remember your life's in my hands."

  Conrad said nothing, only giving Kurt a dirty look. The pain had caused tears to begin pouring out his eyes. "S-Sorry," he meekly said in-between gasps.

  "You are going to be sorry alright, you little bitch." Leaning back so that he didn't cast a shadow on Conrad's face, Kurt yanked his sword out the asphalt, letting the tip lightly drop on Conrad's throat. Kurt could feel the motions of his Adam's apple through the blade. "Here's what's gonna happen: I'm gonna ask you a bunch of questions, and you are going to answer them sincerely. The alternative to that is just one." Punctuating his words, Kurt put just a little bit more weight behind his sword. "So? Which one's gonna be?"

  "I'll...I'll talk."

  "Good," said Kurt, sourly, as he pulled his sword back again. "This contact you have, how do they look like? Who are they?"

  "A tall man, tanned. He always wears a black shawl and a bronze mask that covers his entire head and looks like an old man's face. Don't know his name. He...he told me to call him Sage."

  "I see," Kurt said, trying to keep his voive even despite his fright. This was the guy Mr. Anderson had dueled against back in Boston. The one with the intel about the order and the DSP. If he had ordered Conrad to join the order, that meant he must have known about them for at least a couple years.

  "Did he..." Kurt began, before a traitorous gasp escaped him. Pulling himself back together, he continued. "Did he have you do anything while in the order? Pass him information or something like that?"

  "No," Conrad answered. He looked at Kurt with puzzlement and something that looked like worry. "H-He really didn't! I promise, bro!"

  Kurt pressed his sword down again. "I'm not your brother, you bastard!" he screamed, sending tremors throughout his chest and making his sword tremble against Conrad's neck. "Don't you fucking call me that, you get it?! Never! You..." The trembling grew in intensity. He had to use Pneuma just to keep his grip on the hilt. "You...son of a..."

  A sob, violent and ugly, rose from his chest and through his nose. He doubled over, his free arm moving to cover his watering eyes. It was too much. The pain, the fear, the puzzlement... They all converged into a tumor of raw pain Kurt just couldn't bear the weight of. He felt his teeth chatter despite the relative warmth, and breathing through his nose became nearly impossible.

  "Why the hell did you do it?" he asked, still looking away. "Just...why?"

  "Because...I wanted the..." Conrad's voice positively dripped with doubt. "Kurt, I'm sorry. I-I just have to have that Aura, okay? This guy promised it to me if I did as he said, and I-"

  "Not that!" Kurt yelled, his head snapping back to look at Conrad. "I already asked you that, you braindead bastard! I meant why did you make me think we were friends! Why did you console me back at Boston? Why didn't you just let me keep hating your guts until the end? Why did you have to twist the motherfucking knife like this?!"

  Conrad looked surprised for a moment, then looked away. "Hell if I know. Got lost in the part I guess."

  "The part, uh?" asked Kurt. His anger was growing with every moment, evaporating his sorrow. "So you never gave a shit about me or Mila?"

  Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

  "No,"

  "Never cared about anyone in the order but you?"

  "Exactly,"

  "And you..." A stop. The feeling of his jaw shaking. "And all you ever wanted was power? That was all you ever cared about?"

  "Yes,"

  "Then why didn't you take me up on my offer?"

  Conrad dithered to answer. He turned his head to look at Kurt. "E-Excuse me?"

  "My offer to teach you Pneuma," Kurt clarified. "You rejected it when I offered. Even after you saw just how easy it would be for me to unlock it for you, you still rejected it. Such an useful ability for someone whose magic is based on their life force. If all you care about his power, then why didn't you just take the deal before bailing on us?"

  Conrad didn't answer. He looked away once more.

  Feeling the blood rush to his head, Kurt ground his heel against Conrad's chest, drawing both an agonized whimper from his mouth, and his eyes back to Kurt's.

  "Well then?" Kurt asked, almost pleadingly despite the fury. "Why?"

  "Because..." A sigh passed through Conrad's lips, and the Aura wielder slumped completely upon its departure. He looked at Kurt with eyes filled by pain. "Because if I had done that, then you would have felt even worse than you are now."

  That answer. That answer went past Kurt's rage and hate, pierced through his chest like the sharpest of blades, and returned him to his pain. He didn't even know what he had been expecting, or why he had even asked the question. But he had, and he had gotten his answer. And all of it did nothing but add up to the pain-tumor.

  And despite that, he still felt compelled to ask yet another question.

  "Conrad," he said, softly. He lifted his foot of the blond's chest, and puleed his sword back. "Conrad. Why are you doing this?"

  "Why indeed?"

  A bolt of adrenaline shot up Kurt's spine. He turned to his left, from where the mysterious voice had come, and found the answer to the mystery standing on the grass of the front lawn closest to him.

  A tall man in a black shawl, sporting a bronze mask in the resemblance of a bearded, scowling senior, and looking at Kurt with eyes that made it clear the man's mood didn't at all match the mask's. He was sitting on what could just be described as a perfectly symmetrical cube whose each side measured three feet. The thing was made of some translucent, light green material.

  "Oh," the man exclaimed insincirely. "Please, don't mind me. I'm just an spectator here. Sorry for the interruption though. I just too much into the story."

  Kurt didn't say a thing. His eyes went to the screen above the stranger's head.

  Sage Sorcerer

  Trismegistus

  LV:23

  "Oh! What does it say?!" excitedly asked the masked man, leaning forward on his cube. "What level am I? And what's my title?"

  "You..." Kurt stammered. The tension made his finger numb and freeze in a rictus. "You know about..."

  "Those weird screens you've been seeing since your fifteenth birthday and the videogame-like abilities that came with them? A thing or two, yeah. Pretty neat stuff. You know where they come from yet?"

  "Conrad," Kurt realized. "He told you."

  The man his powers identified as Trismegistus nodded. "Conrad called me a couple days after the Ruth Incident and told me. To be fair though, I kinda dragged it out of him." The man giggled, and shrugged in a sitcom-esque fashion. "I felt he was withholding some juicy intel in his report, and his fished it out. What can I say? I am gossipy hen."

  The man hopped off the cube, and reached for something in his shawl's pocket, procuring from it a vial filled with a glowing blue liquid.

  "Now, i'd love to sit and talk a little more with you, Kurt. I really would." With a snap of the man's thumb, the vial's cap popped off, and a silver, mist-like vapour rose from it in thin plumes. "Sadly, our big plans for the Red Aura are to unfold tonight, so we kinda have to get going."

  "And you think I'm gonna let you?!" Kurt seethed, clutching his sword with both hands.

  "I don't actually. That is what this-" He rose the vial with a flourish, then poured its contents at the cube. "-is for."

  Kurt moved to lunge at the man, flaring his Od to its practical limit. He could have reached the man faster than the liquid could fall. It would be as simple as swatting at it with the flat of his sword, and then lean his wrists into the motion, ensuring that it was the edge what reached the man.

  This ideal was broken by a flash of blue light that exploded behind Kurt. His mind, previously laser focused on the masked man, suddenly remembered that Conrad was in the picture, and right behind Kurt at that.

  Fear and instinct took over. Kurt planted his feet on the grass, turning back and lunging away from the cube. So primal and thoughtless was the action that Kurt only registered the fact that Conrad was moving away from Kurt, up the street, when he had already commited himself to the charge.

  A plethora of curses was ringing through his skull when he turned back a second time, and they intensified when he saw the vial hit the cube's top, breaking like a bottle of chmpagne against a yatch's hull, splashing its contents on it.

  The cube began glowing and sizzling, both reaction growing in intensity with every passing second.

  The masked man reached for his pocket again, and took from it an apple. He pinched a portion of it away, dropping it on the cube, and then threw the rest overhand. The piece of fruit went over Kurt's head, crossed the street in an arc, and finally slammed against the roof of the house opposite to the one he was standing in front off. The man made a sharp gesture, a Slat Tighearnais materialazing in his hand for a second, and the apple exploded, its juices painting the roof on its entirety.

  "So here's what's gonna happen," the man said, walking away from the cube. The thing's inner energy seemed to reach the limit of its stability, because it soon began to unravel, losing its shape and...inflating. The glass-like substance that formed the cube was rapidly turning into a kind of foam, increasing its volume explosively. It was, Kurt thought, like seeing one of those elephant toothpaste experiments. "This little guy here is gonna get to be about twenty or so feet tall. Once it stops growing, it's gonna move towards the apple. Its body is considerably acidic too, so I'm pretty sure you can tell what's gonna happen when it reaches that house." The man began running up the street, following Conrad, and yelled the last part. "Stop it or stop us! Your choice!"

  Kurt was paralized, his head snapping between the running man and its alchemichal weapon.

  "Shit," he whispered as he watched the man run away. The sizzling stopped, replaced by a massive sloshing. Kurt turned to the sound. "Holy shit!"