Five Arabian Nights

Chapter 7

The Third Day (2)

Jaune Arc was not the strongest man in the world. He was the polar opposite of "powerful," in fact. He knew how to swing a sword, but the only things he had actually dealt with were the monsters known as "the Grimm." He fought monsters and even trained specifically to fight monsters. Never did he ever think about fighting something humanoid.

So the idea of fighting a person frightened him. The idea of taking a sentient life away from the world scared him to death. Again, he was a coward in many ways. But perhaps his cowardice in killing was the most justified among his long list of fears. A deliberate action to eternally end the story of another sounded far too painful for him to handle.

He enjoyed thinking from others' perspectives and making books out of them. If the books happened to be inaccurate, then he would make revisions to them. Through trial and error, he was able to solidify the stories of others around him, thus letting him relate to them better. He found it fascinating; to find that not everyone's stories were not like his, and how his was one-of-a-kind like any other story.

To forcefully end such stories were far out of Jaune's mind.

Yet, somehow, he felt like destroying this machine. This machine that resembled a person's body structure. Perhaps the sleek helmet that resembled anything but a human's face motivated Jaune to use his own adrenaline to fight it.

The blond knight fought with an incredibly defensive stance due to his lack of offense. As the machine swung one of its blades at his torso, Jaune leaned away from the blade's direction and ducked, his sword close by his chest. As soon as the hateful machine swung its other blade as if it were trying to cleave Jaune apart, the knight raised his shield and moved underneath the blade as it skidded across durable metal. Jaune twisted his body as he saw the machine preparing to strike from a new direction.

As the blade came down vertically, Jaune grit his teeth and threw his knee against the elbow of his shield arm. The powerful shield let the blade slide away from Jaune himself, and the knight soon found his chance to strike. Jaune Arc relentlessly slashed at the machine's torso.

Clang, went the machine's magnificent steel.

Jaune cursed the machine for its durable armor. His foe backed off and remained still for what felt like an eternity. His eyes shined briefly, as if to anger the knight. But Jaune knew that this was anything but a person; whatever the machine did, it did not resemble a person. It did not resemble a person. It barely resembled a person. It barely did…

And yet, Jaune felt like obliterating it as if it were a person.

His anger grew as he could hear the screams of those who have hurt him once. It was not fair. If they die, then so did his efforts to avoid death in the first place.

The knight readied himself as the machine charged forward once more. It slashed at Jaune endlessly, this time giving no room for the blond to retaliate. Frustration grew within Jaune as the blows became harder and harder against his shield. Fed up with the non-stop attacks sent by the machine, the knight forcefully pushed his shield against an incoming attack as he swung his sword at his bloodless opponent.

Sparks flew across the air. He hit a vital point.

The machine returned to attack Jaune once more. This time, it attacked in a formulated pattern. Caught off guard by the machine's change of strategy, Jaune felt one of the blades stab his stomach. He felt the blade protrude out of his back, but the knight grit his teeth and dealt with the pain. Because all he wanted to do was tear apart the machine out of sheer anger and frustration. The knight stabbed the machine's chest over and over again as his enemy lifted him into the air. After getting attacked multiple times by the knight, the machine threw Jaune across the factory.

The world went white.

And then it went black.

Red covered his vision. He felt it. He could feel himself about to drown in his own anger. The anger that prevented him from moving on. This anger of his drove him insane. For what felt like a millennia, Jaune drifted across a red river within a black world. The river trickled down the darkness, its color unaffected by the lack of light in the area. Jaune floated down the red line, his body drenched with the essence of anger itself. He could not see his reflection, but he heard laughing.

Laughs directed at him.

And the screaming and the hating and the whining. He heard the voices of many testing his patience to its fullest extent. It grew. He could see his hatred now. Within the darkness above him, a giant eye fluttered open as it stared down at him. Its red pupil turned into a mouth, laughing at him, as he drifted down the red line that slowly expanded. The river became a lake, and the lake turned into a whirlpool of lethal thoughts.

Suicide. Revenge.

Even he had thought of such things sometimes. No matter how much he tried to hide such thoughts, in the end, Jaune was presented his most disgusting self. The eye above him melted, its remains turning blood red as each drop made the whirlpool run faster. Jaune felt his body tearing apart. His limbs went numb. Where the eye once was lay a giant heart, beating fast. And it beat faster as the whirlpool continued to speed up. The heart began to bleed as Jaune's anger grew. What was the point of his anger? Why was he angry? Why did he need to be angry?

Did he have any right to be angry?

The hatred bled more and more out of the heart, and the large organ stretched unnaturally. Jaune screamed as he realized how unfair people had been to him, regardless of his circumstances. And soon, he had no mouth to scream, and all that was left was his mind soaring across the whirlpool.

The heart above his remains burst into an explosion of white. The whiteness surrounded the whirlpool, and soon, Jaune found himself laying still in an empty world once more.

Emptiness. The result of anger prevailing over oneself.

Jaune felt empty.

In the end, revenge was wrong.

To replace one's own dreams with a dream to end other dreams was to turn oneself into a monster. To contort one's own sense of reality without consulting help from anything around him or her…

It was a selfish and impatient thing to do.

No. He still had a chance to prevent the monstrous dream from coming true.

Jaune got up, the ground beneath him pitch-black. His body had a linear pale yellow color to it. He looked up.

A figure of red stood far away from him. The figure resembled that of the machine he faced earlier in the factory.

So this was it.

The machine was himself all along. His own hatred, waiting to explode. And Jaune himself had to become the light for the dark path of disintegrating his anger.

The light stood up, the hatred standing far away from it. Soon, the figure of red walked towards the yellow man. Nothing but anger and second thoughts stood in the plane of existence.

The figure of absolute red took out its armblades. No blue color shone from it; only a dull black color appeared. Meanwhile, the figure of pale yellow prepared its sword and shield. Only four colors existed in the plane of existence: nothingness, the end of nothingness, anger, and redemption.

The light attacked first, no longer afraid of the hatred. It swung its black blade at its bright-red adversary, which leaned back before charging forward. Having anticipated the counter-attack much earlier, the pale yellow figure raised its solid-yellow shield by its side. Sparks of white emitted between one of the figure's black blades and the immovable shield.

Without any hesitation, the figure of red swept one of its feet at the ground, only to have the light jump over it. The pale yellow figure slashed at the hatred as it descended, finally stopping the once unstoppable anger. The figure with the sword and shield charged forward and slashed at the figure of red. When hatred barely deflected the yellow figure's attack, the wielder of the sword and shield immediately spun around and slashed vigorously at the hatred. It slashed over and over and over and over and over again. Red spewed out of the hatred as its own color splattered across the black ground.

Then, the world turned red.

Everything went red. Only the small yellow figure was left. The black and the white had vanished. Anger. Overwhelming anger.

The light twisted its body as it raised its shield, deflecting a blade of black that attempted to ambush him from the endless area of red. The yellow wielder of the sword and shield turned again. Raising its shield once more, sparks of white flew across the red air and landed on the once invisible ground.

The light remained still as it waited for any more attacks.

Silence took over.

The white sparks remained still on the ground. The wielder of the sword and shield remained still. Red still remained everywhere. Red.

The red of hatred.

For it was anything other than hatred, then the red would have resembled something more delicate. It would have been red like roses. But rather than roses, hatred dominated the air around the figure of redemption.

Silence remained dominant.

Silence.

Nothing.

Void.

Breathless.

Soundless.

Lifeless

and deathless.

A speck of red overlapped the white sparks on the ground. The figure of pale yellow immediately raised its sword.

The knight of redemption threw the blade towards the spark's direction.

The machine Jaune Arc had been hunting all this time had finally been caught. Caught off-guard by the sword being thrown towards itself, the essence of hatred itself propelled towards an iron bar that lay within an unfinished part of the factory. The many bars of iron and the end of solid ground indicated how unfinished the factory was.

The machine twitched erratically as it reached for the Arc's blade, which lay pierced through the very center of its chest. But alas, the battle had ended as soon as Jaune's patience trumped his own anger. Its eyes shimmered as the furious light behind it slowly died.

Jaune Arc walked to his once dangerous foe. The machine let out a massive amount of sparks from the gaps between its limbs as its energy faded. The once furiously red visor had become empty and black. The machine had become nothing but a mere memory.

The blond knight walked across an iron beam as he stopped in front of the machine. Immature as it may have been, the essence of anger influenced negative emotions the most. But learning how to overcome anger could have been the key to becoming wiser.

Jaune knew that. He just had to remember it.

Reaching out for his blade, the knight grabbed his weapon and tore it out of the machine. No longer nailed to the iron bar behind it, the machine slumped over and fell off of the thin platform, falling into an endless pit of nothingness.

The road of experience may not seem forgiving, but in the end, anger taught many how to be strong. All that was needed to deal with anger was time.

A bit of time and dedication.

It was as simple as it seemed.

…

…

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The Third Day (2) -END-