Chapter 158: Lighting

Chapter 158: Lighting

DISCLAIMER: This story is NOT MINE IN ANY WAY. That honor has gone to the beautiful bastard Ryuugi. This has been pulled from his Spacebattles publishment at threads/rwby-the-gamer-the-games-we-play-disk-five.341621/. Anyway on with the show...err read.

Lighting

Taking a deep breath, I snapped my fingers and my friends came to my side, arraying themselves around me as they had before. In my mind I saw the summoning circles I'd used to call each of them for the first time, the pentagrams they'd appeared inside.

Only this time, it was they who made a circle around me.

Ereb, Levant, Suryasta, Vulturnus, and Xihai each appeared at one of the imaginary star's point and Crocea Mors flowed into my gauntleted hands. Feeling his desire without having to exchange so much as a word, I canceled my Armored Shell and the gauntlets immediately began to melt, spilling down my arms in rivers and drops that splattered on the ground and began to flow away from me. In moments, he'd made a ring of steel around me, the outer edges at my other Elemental's toes, before at last going solid and still.

I took a slow breath and felt their presence within me as I did. I looked at them all without moving a muscle, reaching out to them with my thoughts, and for the first time in a long time wondered.

Do you guys know what you're doing? Because I don't.

They looked back at me without a word and smiled reassuringly, the emotion brushing against my mind even when the expressions were slow to come to their faces.

We are with you always.

The response didn't come from any one of them nor even from them all, but simple formed within my mind as a fact. Even so, it felt like the truth and I knew, knew, that I trusted them.

Exhaling slowly, I nodded once.

"Okay," I said aloud. "Let's do this, then."

At once, my Elementals began to shift and change. Ereb and Xihai, the ones who'd made their bodied out of physical water and earth, were the most obvious, with drops of water and flakes of dirt falling from their forms until their features were worn smooth and all that remained were blank figures of water and earth. The others shifted more subtly, as their edges dulled and the lines blurred, Levant's eternal smile getting wore away by the wind as Suryasta's eyes were consumed by flames. Vulturnus simply began to flicker more wildly, the appearance of humanity fading with each motion until he was faceless and blank, while Crocea Mors shifted subtly, my face changing in the reflection of the steel ring until it was purely my own.

And then, when all that was left were blank Elemental figures, they knelt as one and put their hands on the circle, as I had down when first I'd summoned them. Murmurs brushed against my thoughts, words in a language I didn't know, and then their bodies began to crumble, fading into dust and sparks and currents of air and water that drifted slowly around the outside of the circle before flowing towards its center.

Towards me.

I remained still as they touched my skin once, each contact bringing with it a shock of Aura. Water and earth fell the ground, filling the inside of the circle in a solid sheet of mud even as sparks rose into a luminous cloud above my head, casting my shadow every which way. The wind kept the cloud aloft, filling the space in-between as it did, and for a moment nothing seemed to happen.

Then my many shadows flickered once and then flowed, moving despite the stable light above. They all gathered in front of my, layering themselves into an unnaturally dark image even though there was light that should have broken the darkness. And then, slowly, my shadow began to move, head at the ring of Crocea Mors as it spun clockwise around me, moving though I was still until it was back where I started.

Not going to lie, it was kind of unnerving, but after several seconds passed and nothing else happened, I started to wonder what the hell was going on.

Which, naturally, when the pain began. It struck me unexpectedly, a tearing sensation, as if something was removing my feetor something below my feet that I'd somehow never noticedand when I tried to move, to escape whatever was causing it, I found my feet stuck firmly to the ground, immobilized against my will.

And then my shadow came free, flowing away from me and exiting the circle to begin another turn around it, this time moving counterclockwise. I remained still and unmoving, senses focused on the unnaturally mobile shadow as it completed its course around me and returned to its starting position. I analyzed it, Observed it, and focused on it intently, but all of my senses told me that it was just a normal shadow, nothing more than an absence of light.

Except, you know, it pretty obviously fucking wasn't. I didn't have a lot of knowledge when it came to shadow manipulation beyond what I'd picked up from watching IndigoI'd done some experimentation to see if I was capable of anything similar and my efforts to summon a darkness or shadow elemental had failed utterly. I hadn't been particularly surprised by that, since, logically speaking, darkness wasn't really an element.Follow current novels at novelhall.com)

After all, I'd thought, darkness was nothing but the absence of light.

As soon as I had that thought, my shadow began to writhe, losing shape and then rising as if stretched from withinfrom below, as impossible as that was. I realized that I'd regained the use of my legs only when I fell to them, hands tearing up fistfuls of the building's roof as the pain rose and I felt as though I was being torn apart from within. Instead, however, my shadow was, ripping and splitting at nonexistent seems as light began to shine out of it, rising into a luminance even I struggle to see through as it flooded across the whole of the spectrum and yet left me untouched.

And then it was gone and in its place stood a figure. At the foot of my shadow, now whole once more, stood a figure that wasn't me and, even more oddly, seemed to be completely composed of light. Something made of light shouldn't have been able to cast a shadow, my mind pointed out, but really, after that whole display, that seemed like a pretty stupid thing to get hung up on so I put it aside and looked over the figure that couldn't have been anything but a Light Elemental, making sure I noticed everything important.

"My Elementals, you mean?" I wonder, frowning slightly as I reviewed what I knew. I could tell he wasn't trying to insult me and the truth was that I honestly didn't know a whole lot about how Elementals worked. No one did, as far as I knew; that knowledge, if it had ever been known at all, had been lost a long, long time ago. "You're right. All I know is that we made a contract"

I paused.

"Yes," The Light Elemental murmured. "A contract with earth, fire, water, air, lighting, and metal. They bound themselves to you and you tied yourself to themthe nature of the contract is that it binds both ways."

"It allows me to summon them," I whispered. "I gain allies and friends and can draw upon their power. But what do they get?"

"You already know," He stated, the voice a bit softer as tones shifted in and out of it.

"Bodies and minds," I said. "Minds that can experience things on a human scaleor close enoughand bodies that can exist and operate on that scale. And they can do it because of the terms of the contract. Our souls will be forever one."

This time, the Light Elemental said nothing, standing impassively. I took that to mean it felt there was nothing to argue.

"Is that how they merge?" I wondered aloud. "They're the elements given form, but they're also pieces of the same puzzleof me."

"Of me," My reflection repeated. Or maybe corrected. I wasn't sure.

"Then you're what happens when all the pieces come back together?" I asked. "Because you're what was broken apart in the first placeme. You're me, aren't you? My soul given form."

He was silent again. Maybe he just didn't feel the need to tell himself he was rightor maybe if I wasn't right, he just wouldn't know. But it made sense; I'd wondered before why earth or wind or fire gave a shit aboutanything, really. Why did they allow themselves to be summoned and do what I asked? But if I gave them parts of myself, then perhaps it made sense that they would help me. And certainly, I hadn't encountered any other Elementals, at least not in the form of minds I could sit down and converse with, because the earth itself didn't have a mind like humans did. There was something there, but not the type of thing that caused earthquakes when it was upset or that became upset at all. You didn't hear about women made of air coming down from the sky to blow people away, eitherbecause it took a person, someone with an Affinity that would allow them to make the connection, to breath something human into the wind or sea.

It made sense. I hadn't had any way to confirm anything before, but the pieces fit.

"Okay then," I said. "Do you have a name, then? The others did."

"Crocea Mors, the name of your ancestral blade," He replied, looking at me still. "Levant and Vulturnus, the winds that blows towards the west. Xihai, the western sea. Suryasta, the sun that sets in the west during Ereb, the evening. The elements have no names but the ones you gave them after you started your journey as the White Tiger of the West. Just as I have no name but the one you have given me."

I stiffened slightly at that, blinking twice.

"Ididn't know that was what those words meant," I replied, voice sounding subdued even to my own ears. I'd never given it much thought beyond recognizing the languages of the namesthe words came from ancient Vytal and Mistral, I knew, but hadn't wondered if they meant anything more than that. Hearing them now though, the connections were fairly blatant.

But I didn't speak those languages. How would I have known their meaning, even subconsciously? Hell, how did I know that was what they meant? I'd have to check later today, but

"If that's true," I began slowly, shaking myself once to regain focus. "And the names of all my Elementals were ones I've given, then what have I named you? If you're the reflection of my soul, what are you called?"

"You know that as well," He stated before tilting his head. "Or perhaps you don't."

"My name," I stated, becoming annoyed. "If you're me, I'd give you my name. Right?"

"That's right," He whispered, eyes blinking open and shut in different places. "Tell me my name."

"I already told you," I said. "My name's Jaune Arc."

He looked at me for a moment, disappointment shining in all one million of his eyes.

"That," He said gravely. "Is not my name."