Tales of Zestiria: The World Beyond

Chapter 34

When the team reached the top of the temple, a throne lowered from the sky and Luilius greeted them. What was strange was how his wings were repaired, it was like they took longer to heal than the rest of his body.

The sky was a bright purple with shades of red and black in the clouds. The only light source was the multitude of stars that were scattered across the sky. Lucilius held his hand up and summoned a scythe; it was pure white with a golden halo laying before it changed into the curved blade. He jumped off from his position on the throne and stabbed his blade into the ground. The party raised their weapons in anticipation of a fight and ready for anything he planned. Lailah, with Celica's help, created a tornado of fire and sent it right at the angel. Mikleo froze the water around him to form icicles and positioned them to attack right after Lailah and Celica's attack.

Lucilius raised his scythe and pierced through the tornado, then ran straight through Mikleo's icicles. Eizen punched the ground to make a wall between the two as Velvet landed a direct hit with her claw. It wasn't a smooth ride when it came to fighting him. No matter what the party threw at him, nothing seemed to scratch him. All they had left to do was evade his attacks or try to defend themselves before his scythe hit them. The one thing keeping them alive was the fact that he was playing with them.

"What's wrong?" Lucilius mocked. "Can't hurt me?"

"I don't think we can win like this," Arthur said.

"But... there has to be a way!" Vanessa pleaded.

"Looks like we weren't prepared after all," Velvet sighed.

"Let me make this easier on you all." Lucilius struck his scythe to the ground and dragged it. The entire temple shook as the cement holding it together broke. Cracks formed beneath each of the party members as the ground collapsed beneath them.

When Velvet woke up, she and Laphicet were back in Aball, or rather, what looked like Aball. Laphicet investigated and found the buildings were fake, when he touched one, his hand went right through it. The trees were also fake and so were the people who walked by. They were still in the temple. She looked on the ground to see a book was barely poking out of the ground. As she reached for it, she found it was real, or at least real enough to be touched. It was empty, all except for one page that read: "even if this place is fake, if I can remember what it looked like and who was in it, I think I can stay myself."

Velvet looked up as the sky turned black and held onto Laphicet's hand. Lucilius descended from the clouds as they separated; he had his scythe in hand and when he reached the ground, the illusion faded around him, revealing the decorated glass flooring. As he walked, the illusion repaired itself when he was further away from it.

Velvet pushed Laphicet behind her as she readied her claw and unleashed the blade on her arm. She sprinted for him, her claw aiming for his neck and her blade ready to block if he used his scythe. He jumped back then launched himself for her with the same momentum she was coming at him with. Both of them clashed and the impact caused the ground to split. Velvet was shot back at Laphicet and Lucilius caught himself in the air. Laphicet summoned paper around him as he trapped the angel in a cage and caused it to explode in a wave of energy. Velvet took the opportunity to go after Lucilius again and used her claw to slam him into a wall.

He kicked her back and she moved out of the way, only for Laphicet to attack from afar. Cards surrounded Laphicet and beams of light shot from them, forcing him to fly and dodge them or use his scythe to cut through them. He was getting annoyed at the two, so swung his scythe to push them both back with heavy wind. Velvet sunk her claw into the ground and grabbed onto Laphicet's hand to keep him from going too far back. They figured that they needed a strategy if they were going to fight Lucilius, it was obvious that attacking him without a plan was going to kill both of them.