The Truth Shall Set You Free

Chapter 6 : Archons

Chapter 6
ARCHONS

...

The Catastrophe had passed.

Chernobog laid in waste. The buildings had collapsed as streets and roads were cracked, broken into pieces while the once towering skyscrapers were annihilated and brought down with the many prideful statues that crashed and shattered into innumerable pieces when they met the cold and indifferent concrete ground, now the once prosperous city with all its glory was reduced, degraded to just concrete, rock and rubble.

The rest of just Ursus just stood still, watching one of their cities get dismantled in such a dishonorable way. Even if their armies were garrisoned near Chernobog, they remained in inaction. They simply watched.

…

A figure could be seen, walking in the ruins of the former city. Her short white hair with red lines and ahoges were waving in the calming after-breeze. She wore a small smile while walking on the torn asphalt streets.
After a while, her gaze focused upon noticing a peculiar looking object buried in the rubble.
She walked to the object and kicked away the rubble laying on top of it, revealing the strange artifact.
It was a gun, but that wasn't the strange part, it was a gun of a model she had never seen before and she had seen her fair share of guns. As someone who used to raid Laterano convoys and steal their guns as trophies, she knew this was something else, something different.

She took the unique weapon in her hands, from the bloodied stock and damaged barrel, she was inspecting every single bit of it. It was a miracle that this gun had survived the catastrophe, even if it had minor damages to it. She then released the magazine, inspecting the bullets inside.
“Interesting, this is?”
She hummed to herself as she investigated the bullet, scrutinizing it at eye level. Even the bullet had no markings in it, no signs or any indication of an origin, as if the entire gun was made to be untraceable.
““But why?””
She thought to herself, everyone knows that the Sankta are the only
manufacturers of guns, even Blacksteel's weapons were made with the help of a Sankta.

““Why make an untraceable one?””
As she was pondering in her mind why this gun was made this way, she placed the magazine back and after a while of figuring out how it works, aimed the gun at some nearby wall of concrete. She adjusted herself into a shooting stance and focused her arts, she grinned as she pulled the trigger.

A flash of light was seen for a split second as the casing dropped and the bullet was expelled with a mighty force she had never felt before while the staggering recoil pushed her one step back with the barrel pointed upwards, smoking.

“What the-!?”
She said to herself in disbelief. She quickly took the magazine off and inspected the gun again. That was the most powerful gun she fired, she then glanced at the concrete wall, now punctured with a circular hole straight to the center. She was good at arts manipulation, but she wasn't that experienced in manipulating the arts in guns for such an accurate sho-

“Wait, what?!”

The girl interrupted herself, realizing that she had not used a single bit of her Arts energy. Curious, she glanced at the wall again. Now, her eyes were burning in intrigue.
The girl ran over to the wall, looking for the bullet and picking it up.
There was no trace of Originium.
“Huh? How the? how does this-”
She cut herself off as she took and dropped one of the bullets in the magazine and placed it in the ground. She then grabbed a rock nearby and with all her strength, struck the bullet.
The casing cracked a small bit and revealed some sort of black powder, but no trace of the familiar energy and aura of originium.

She giggled to herself, like a child finding a new toy.
“This! Was this weapon the ‘3rd party’ used in dismantling Mephisto’s army?!”
As she was trying to compute in her mind how this all works, something colorful next to where she found the weapon, and was covered in ash caught her eye. She swept off some layers of dust and grabbed a card shaped object near a torn piece of cloth.