An Absence in the Soul

[Ruby Rose]

I whirled Crescent Rose swiftly, flicking the weapon's release as I did so, the compact rifle folding out into a large red and black scythe almost twice the size of me and dug the tip into the soft sand below. Wynrel strode up to the weapon and inspected it like a detective at a crime scene. "What... is this?" she asked me, tilting her head in mild confusion. "It's my baby, Crescent Rose. She's a High-Caliber Sniper-Scythe," I explained, but Wynrel only seemed so be in more shock than she was before. "A whatawhatawhat?" she quipped, and I snorted loudly. "Do you know what a gun is?" I asked her just to make sure, and she immediately averted her gaze.

"Isn't it, uh... like some kind of crossbow... but it uses little rocks... or something?" she replied with uncertainty, and I snorted for the second time. "Uhm, kind of. Crescent Rose is a scythe and a gun in one, but this gun fires something called Dust, which is what basically powers my entire world back home, and it can use different types of Dust," I explained like a total nerd. I extended my fingers to the ground, letting the Omnillium that built my body unravel into a box-shape under my hand. After a moment or two had passed, I lifted my hand to reveal the orange clip of Dust ammunition I had crafted, before reaching underneath Crescent Rose, knocking out the old clip and jamming in the new one. "Different Dust types do different things, like this." I raised Crescent Rose and took aim at a far away bush, my silver eye scouting it through the scope. I pulled back the bolt on Crescent Rose with a satisfying hammer-like sound, before pulling hard on the trigger, an orange streak soaring through the air towards the bush.

The Dust bullet struck the foliage and exploded, covering the bush in roaring flames, the orange glow swiftly engulfing it like some hungry beast, leaving it in ashes. "It's like magic..." Wynrel blinked, looking between me and the bush. "It... kind of is, hey?" I agreed and giggled, swinging Crescent Rose around a second time, her frame collapsing back into a rifle, before closing completely into her compact form which I hooked onto the back of my belt. "How about you, Wynrel? What do you have?" I asked the elf, and she giggled quietly.

"Nothing as impressive as yours, that's for sure," she explained and reached down to her boots, grasping the handles of a pair of daggers and yanking them out with a reverberating shink sound. They were thin and long with a slight curve to them. The grips had the diamond pattern of snake skin, and the metal glinted with a slight red tinge. "Wow, they're beautiful!" I squealed as I eyed them off. "I made them myself with my mentor's instruction," Wynrel nodded in agreement and sighed. "But that's not all," she warned and flicked some kind of catch at the back of each dagger. Without warning, they extended to twice their size, becoming a pair of swords. "W-woah!" I squeaked again, impressed by the mechanisms of what seemed to be an archaic weapon.

"And one more thing," Wynrel continued and I gasped in surprise. There was more?! Wynrel raised the swords and slammed the pommels of them together, where they seemed to magnetize to each other. The blades curved back slightly more, and some thin line was pulled taut between the tips of the blades. "It's... a bow?" I asked and titled my head. "But where are the arrows?" I couldn't see any arrows on her person at all... unless they were under her coat?

Wynrel reached into her coat with her right hand and retrieved a short, metal cylinder and clicked a button on the side of it. The cylinder extended out to around two feet, a set of steel feathers emerging from one end and a sharp, three-pronged head on the other. Before I could utter another word, Wynrel strung the arrow on the bow and spun around, taking aim and loosing the steel arrow at a tree for what seemed to be no apparent reason. But as the arrowhead lodged itself into the tree with a loud thunk, it was accompanied by a crunch. Stunned into silence, I approached the tree to look at the arrow... which had happened to skewer some beetle against the trunk.

"W-what?!" I squealed and covered my mouth. "You hit a tiny target... and hardly looked a it..." I mused quietly and spun around to face Wynrel, who was smiling like a Cheshire. "It's called a hunter's intuition. You learn where everything is, will be and has never been," she informed me knowledgeably, and I giggled. "You might have to teach me," I suggested and she nodded while chuckling in amusement. "I can do that," she agreed, and I jumped for joy giddily.