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THE PREQUEL
| Not too long ago, Cecilia, Aguero, Lance, and some other masters worked together under the command of the Royal familia. They had been ordered to take down whoever had taken down the Solace familia, high nobles deeply connected to the Fiorian royal familia, and had rudely positioned themselves in their castle. The message about this massacre reached Crocus thanks to a single knight that had managed to survive the massacre. Little did they know that the knight was left alive for the specific purpose of delivering the message and getting everyone rattled to take action. When Cesare found out about it he got deeply intrigued by the fact that someone had the courage to make the Fiorian familia their enemy and challenge them by taking down high nobility that were closely related to them. He decided to head out to Castle Solace himself, find out who this person was and test out their strength himself. Meanwhile, the Fiorian familia had also ordered the Rune Knights to move out and ensure that all other routes were properly guarded and blocked to prevent the culprit from escaping from Castle Solace while closing in on them. Eventually the Masters reached the town and found out that it was entirely abandoned. They were relieved as it was gonna save them time to evacuate the citizens before they engaged into any possible battles. Cesare had also reached the town at this point and stealthily maneuvered his way past the Rune Knights with his magic. He quickly positioned himself on a rooftop looking down on the streets. When he saw the Masters of the other guilds arguing with each other about the correct method of approach, he couldn't help himself and burst out into laughter. As he gave himself away, the Masters decided that they had to take care of Cesare before he ruined their plans. Cesare didn't care much, he waved and dashed away towards Castle Solace leaving the Masters behind. Each Master believed that they should be taking down the culprit in Castle Solace and not be the one to focus on Cesare. Since they were unable to determine who would go after Cesare, they all decided to ignore that issue for now and continued to move towards Castle Solace together. Meanwhile, Cesare was already moving through Castle Solace, looking for the ones that were crazy enough to do this and stumbled upon Lance instead, who had decided that going solo was the way to deal with this problem. Cesare and Lance ended up fighting each other because Cesare did not want to share his prey. Aguero and Cecilia seemed to be a bit more lucky when they stumbled upon a masked man in one of the larger rooms. They were certain that they had found the culprit and engaged into combat with him but the battle seemed to be dragged out and the masked man didn't seem to have any intentions of ending it quickly. Aguero dealt a proper blow, breaking the mask partly, revealing half of the face of the culprit. Aguero chuckled and stated how he admired the fact that the masked man had been able to hold himself against himself for quite some time now but that it was time to stop playing. It turned out Aguero had only been using a small fraction of his power up till now, simply to test out the masked man and get a good fight out of it as well. Cecilia yelled and told Aguero to stop it because the Rune Knights were already in town and ready to take over the situation, since the Masters were only supposed to seize the culprit but Aguero ignored Cecilia and dashed at the masked man to deliver a powerful blow. Before the blow connected a smile could suddenly be seen on the face of the man with the half broken mask. As Aguero connected his attack, a loud bang could be heard and a gushing wound appeared across his own chest. The culprit had been waiting for Aguero to use his full power against him to reverse the power of such a powerful attack against Aguero himself, Cecilia thought to herself as she properly evaluated the situation. She was furious at Aguero but realized that the situation at hand just got worse with Aguero down and unable to continue to fight. Meanwhile, Lance and Cesare were still going at it with Lance utilizing his Light-type Magic and Cesare with his Darkness-type Magic. The masked man used a hole made by Aguero and Cecilia in the walls of the castle to drop himself outside. The fall however would have been too long to survive. Cecilia quickly ran towards the hole to look outside, only to see the masked man standing on top of an enormous vessel which floated in the air. The Rune Knights were trying to siege it from below with spells and attacks, but the attacks were not able to get through the magical barriers of the vessel. She realized that if she attempted to do any type of attack that could actually damage the vessel, the masked man would simply return it and lay waste to her and the entire castle when the damage would be returned. The castle started to crumble due to the massive vibrations, Cesare saw the flying ship in the air so he stopped fighting Lance for a second. Lance used this opportunity to rush up and find Cecilia and Aguero, scolding himself for believing they'd be able to handle the situation. The Council received a message from the Rune Knights that the culprit had a floating ship and that they couldn't penetrate the barrier. They quickly voted and decide to use the Etherion Cannon. When Cecilia saw the light in the sky she realized that they had all been played horribly. The masked man raised his arm into the sky, and before the Etherion Cannon crashed down on him, she could see him smile while turning his head towards her nonchalantly. At the moment of impact the Etherion beam got reflected back up into the sky towards the Etherion System destroying it permanently. Regardless if this person would be on board of the ship now, the ship could never be targeted by Etherion anymore in the future; he had just made sure of that. The Council had suffered a terrible loss and played themselves by using the Etherion Cannon after centuries and lost it instantly. The Masters were still not over the fact that they were fooled by this masked man. Lance held a grudge against Cesare and believed that his presence held him up for too long, which made him unable to solve the situation. Cecilia was upset that Aguero did not heed her words, and Aguero only cared about having another go at the masked man. There was no Etherion System anymore, so darker guilds no longer had to fear the fact that they could get one-shotted from the sky. This weakened the stability in Fiore, allowing chaos to rise up faster and dark guilds to act more openly. As the airship flew up, the masked man looked down at everyone in the town, with a smile on his face that could only tell that he was not afraid of them. He had just made it possible for dark guilds to act more openly, chaos to spread faster and made it more difficult for Fiore to maintain order by having a big gun as a threat. With the Etherion System gone, he was now also able to safely fly in The Ark without getting shot down from the sky. His intentions were clear, but his reasons were still unknown to the rest of the world. What would happen next was still unsure, but Fiore had a new enemy, Grimoire Heart. |
