The world had ceased to make any sense. One moment, Yahiko was staring at the impossible, his missing best friend standing in a glimmer of crimson energy. The next, a new danger assailed his senses.
A soft buzzing rang in the air, swelling from a gentle hum to a harsh drone. He looked up. The sky, like a child's drawing of a grey winter day, was moving. A bizarre glimmering cloud of insects and flies that had no business existing in the dead of winter sky, impeding the sun.
"Akashi..." he gasped, almost unintelligibly. "What is this?"
Yet Akashi's focus was locked on that woman who had just attempted to kill him seconds prior.
Before Yahiko had a moment to react, Akashi had reached out his own hand —the same that just healed him— and grabbed that woman's neck, hoisting her up and slamming her against the brick wall behind her.
Yahiko felt his stomach drop when he exclaimed, "Akashi, stop!" This wasn't his annoying, silly friend he knew so well. This was something else.
The woman's eyes went wide, now open with mad panic and pain as she scratched at his wrists and round and around, nervously clawing for freedom, but it didn't seem like nails would do her any good. Akashi kept her there, however, what lasted a moment actually felt like forever. Then he finally released her, and she fell onto the ground, choking and gasping as her lungs worked hard to escape her tiny chest.
"Are you from the government?" Akashi's voice was vacant, offering no emotional response.
The woman forced out a gush of blood onto the ground. She turned her head upwards and looked at him with a fire in her eyes which were full of tears and pain. "Y-yes… Just an intern… for now. You won't… get anything out of me." She fought for her final breath. Her eyelids closed, and she fell into an unconscious state once again.
The questions in Yahiko's mind came pouring out. He moved towards Akashi, as if he was going to pass out, and his hand shook as he pointed to the woman who was assaulted.
"Akashi!" His voice was broken and full of despair. "I can't… I can't keep going! Please! Where were you for the last whole year? What is this 'mage' thing? Why did the government come for me?"
Eventually, Akashi looked at him with a little more attention. He almost didn't notice the smile that he gave, but it did not go to his eyes. They were still very old and tired. "Wow. Wow. Get a hold of yourself, Yahiko."
He pulled his hand through his dark hair. "Just telling it is… a lot. How about I just show you?"
As if it couldn't have been more infuriating, he dismissed the alley with a wave of his hand and left.
Yahiko was standing there like a statue, the woman lying there unconscious weighing against the fact that the only person that could bring him back to reality was going away. He looked at the sky one last time in desperation and followed him clumsily.
What he heard first was the city noises. Not the usual minor noises of the life, but the deep, percussive whump of explosions far away. When they came out of the alley, the reality that faced them made Yahiko want to vomit.
Large black clouds of smoke were going up like the most somber of fires over the outline of the city. A car was on its side, its wheels were still turning slowly. The air was full of ash and ozone.
Then he saw him. An old man, falling in the entrance of a shop. A wave of normal, human instinct took over his fear. "Help! We've got to help him!" Yahiko shouted, running towards the figure.
He extended a hand, lightly grasping the man. "Sir? Are you—"
The instant his fingers made contact, it occurred. It just settled down like a sandcastle. The man's shape, did not fall apart; it crumbled inward as his skin, his clothing, his very essence evaporated to a fine, grey, powdery dust. It happened in total silence.
Yahiko's scream died in his throat, a silent, airless thing. He staggered backward... his boots kicking grey dust from the pavement, then fell on the concrete, scraping his palms; no pain existed in his concept of reality. Looking up, he held his head in disbelief, his mental screams of rejection mingling in his thoughts.
"This city is done, too," Akashi's voice sliced through the horror like a shard of ice. He didn't even break stride.
Something within Yahiko broke. A volatile mixture of horror, rage, and a year of repressed anger erupted into an overwhelming burst of energy. He threw himself forward, awkwardly and in a panic. He grabbed large clenched pieces of Akashi's jacket and twisted the material in his hands, shaking him to strength he never knew he was capable of.
"WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON!" He yelled directly in Akashi's face, barely containing the spit flying from his mouth. His eyes were wide, the white all around, and his whole body shook as if a leaf caught in the wind.
Akashi did not resist. He stood there, not resisting the firmness of Yahiko's force, his face hardly betraying his thoughts. He waited until Yahiko would calm down before he spoke in a voice that seemed dangerously calm. "Do you not watch the TV? The 'unknown phenomena'? The national defense drills? It's all because… of 'unknown phenomena'."
Yahiko's fight faded out of his body almost as quickly as it entered. His hands dropped, and he rocked back a step like he was drunk, staring at his own hands as if they belonged to someone else. "So… so what is it?" The words were almost a whisper, breaking all along the way. "Does it… have a name?"
"Just follow me," Akashi's tone was final, "It is better if I show you."
The trip to the coast was moving downward through the nine circles of hell. The consistent buzzing of the insects was a bemusing noise.
People throughout the area were caught in a tableaux of their last seconds—a mother clutching toward a child, a businessman on his phone, a couple embracing—all of them, blurring and eroding into non-differentiated mounds of grey sand. The mere wind would catch what was left, scattering evidence of their existence through the abandoned streets.
Yahiko walked with his hand over his mouth, not to keep another smell out but to keep his nausea inside.
When they arrived at the view out over the water, his mind, already on the edge, just fell apart.
When Yahiko's legs failed him. he crumbled; he hit the paver path with a dull sound. A raw, guttural noise that was somewhere between a sob and retch was ripped from him. His feet were scrabbling backward which was challenging, since he slipped and shredded his hand through his shoes into the gravel paver's, until they could pretend to distance themselves from the merit, the depth, of the thing on the horizon.
It was an Eye. A singular, gigantic eyeball, so dreary it overshadowed the vast ocean it floated over. Its size was so huge like a titanic. And upon its horrible shell, millions of smaller eyes twitched, blinked, and peered with blind, ravenous indifference.
"Don't be pathetic," Akashi admonished. The next instant, he was there. Standing over, somehow crossing the distance as if he hadn't moved. Concern was a mask on his face that would have fooled Yahiko. "What you're seeing is real. Got it?"
Yahiko could do nothing but hyperventilate, his chest rising and falling in frantic breaths, and his fingers clawing into the ground. He couldn't look away from the abomination. "You mean to tell me…" he wheezed, laughter erupting from the pit of his belly, "…that giant eyeball thing... with a million little eyes... is real?"
"They call it the 'Eyes of Death,'" Akashi muttered as if he were naming a common animal. "This city is already done. Think of it as a disease. It happens instantly and airborne too. You're fine because my power healed you and you're near me."
Amidst the overwhelming fear, one stubbornly human thought surfaced: "What about that woman?" Yahiko swallowed hard, still staring at the Eye. "Will she die?"
Akashi actually looked taken aback. His eyes rolled and then let out a short sputter of surprise. "Huh. I was close to her. My aura should've protected her too."
After they moved back from the cliffside, a new voice, soft and pleasant, interrupted the buzzing and crashing in the background. "Akashi... did you do what I asked?"
Yahiko turned, heart racing. No one. Then he saw it: a tiny wooden doll. The voice was coming from there.
Akashi pinched the bridge of his nose, exasperated. He squeezed the doll, "No. They weren't there. Probably ran."
Seeing Yahiko's bewildered stare, Akashi let out a short sigh. "Don't worry... this is just an idiot woman who is at a party on a deserted island."
"Ahhh, how many times have I told you?" the voice from the doll sounded amused, not angry. "Introduce me in a good way! You always try to ruin my image. Well, whatever. Hey, Yahiko! I know it's hard to understand, but just follow Akashi for now."
"Who are you?" Yahiko stumbled, adding 'talking doll' to his brain's list of world-shattering, reality-bending phenomena he'd just processed. "What is a mage?"
"Akashi never introduces me properly! I'm Hakaze. And a mage is... uh, hmm. Think of it like this: a lump of clay. The clay is potential, you can shape it into anything. That's what we do with our power."
At this point, Akashi gave a long-delayed sigh, clearly exhausted. "This idiot can't explain anything to you. Yahiko. In simple tent-shuttering terms, we can manifest that internal energy into any external thing that we can conceive of. That's what a mage is."
Yahiko's eyes widened, and his head spun as if in a whirling basement. "But what is the clay? What is the energy?"
Before either answered, the ground below convulsed. The whole city shook again with a deep, groaning roar that emanated from the heart of the earth, but buildings swayed under the stress while the pavement fissured.
"Shit. We are running out of time." Akashi's calm cracked, giving way to acute urgency. "We have to go. NOW!" Akashi took hold of Yahiko's arm.
The world around them blinked. When Yahiko opened his eyes, he found himself on the outer edge of the city.