Chapter 1: The early morning, topic of conversation: Bond through fate

"Glaring light, brighter than every day! Blind the enemy and extinguish every shadow! Glare! Blind with light! Frozen and unable to move! Defense is impossible!"
"Abweh-"

But too late, a brilliant light hit her and blinded her eyes, so that she involuntarily raised her hand to her eyes. How could light be so bright? Damn it, so bright and so fast ?! Suddenly she noticed how shackles were put around her arms, chains around her neck. Immediately she felt noticeably nauseous. She couldn't stand chains around her neck. The light contracted around her and fixed itself more and more around her, until it became more and more threads and chains and she pulled together in the, tied her up ... damn she was so infinitely tired.

"Stop it!" She yelled at her weapon, which was only a blurred shape in the blazing light. But the figure said nothing, did nothing, just stood there as if it were unable to move, as if frozen, a doll without threads. While she was getting more and more tired, she could hardly get a clear thought, clung to individual thoughts, tried hard to control her thoughts further, but clung more and more to her only salvation that she had to hope for in this spellbattle, the only person that could give her salvation: her other self, what was there in front of her. But she felt nothing of his thoughts, his feelings as usual.

Where was their bond? It hit her like a thousand slaps in the face. Despair, loneliness, sadness and anger hit them all at once combined with the realization: their weapon was not there. They weren't connected. And this pain broke her last resistance to the blazing light, which more and more wrapped around her and more and more robbed her of her strength and ability to think. The pain constricted her throat, but it wasn't the pain of the bonds that drove a single tear from her eyes as she fell to the floor with a clatter and surrendered to the soothing, familiar blackness of unconsciousness ... Look at her gun when it suddenly moved ...Not a person standing there in front of her, just a shadow, a shadow of her fantastic offspring; How could she have been so stupid, she asked herself sarcastically and at the same time bitterly full of self-irony ... why would you even want to be able to save the Sacrifice oflightlessfrom the light ...

Apparently there was no salvation.

The small, black-haired, petite Misaki widened her eyes in horror. Bathed in sweat, she stared at the dark ceiling, lit by the dull moonlight that penetrated through the drawn curtains. Panting, she tried to normalize her breathing and organize her troubled thoughts.

"I had a bad dream, I just had a bad dream," she mumbled to herself, trying to convince herself. One bad dream, like any other, but she knew exactly that it wasn't so true. The dramatic images of her dream were still too clearly before her eyes: the lost spellbattle, the shock of fighting with an unknown weapon that she thought was hers, the pain of total bondage ... yes, especially that Pain. The pain and fear she had felt in that dream still numbed her senses.

Tired, exhausted and sleepless, she turned slightly in her bed and looked at the clock. 5 am. Slowly a pale light fell through the curtains, soon the sun would rise; The first birds began their morning song outside, softly but relentlessly, and the first kitchen boys in the canteen shuffled past their windows in small groups, still half-sleepy.

Misaki gave the red-haired Tari a skeptical look, who slept calmly next to her tonight. 'Damn it, maybe I should have tried their new tea for once. 'the Sacrifice mused sarcastically as she looked sleepily in the mirror and brushed her teeth monotonously.A sudden noise from the next room made Misaki look up, and Tari caught her attention. She smiled pityingly, her roommate now also seemed to have poor sleep towards morning. After another half an hour, meanwhile it was around 5:45 am, Misaki woke Tari gently and put water on the kettle that the two of them had bought. Neither coffee nor tea were drinkable in the morning in the canteen and could really spoil the day, as they both knew from their own experience.

Sleepy and tired, Tari rubbed her eyes when she was gently shaken by the shoulder of her roommate. "Five more minutes ...", Tari mumbled sleepily, which would actually have elicited a small smile from Misaki, as it reminded her of herself, but this morning he just didn't feel like it; her day had probably started too badly.

But at the latest when the smell of fresh tea rose to Tari, and a few minutes later that of coffee too, there was no stopping even for her as a real morning grouch. With a jerk she was out of bed and quickly got ready. It was only when she held her cup of tea in her hands that her haste eased and she sank back with relish.

"Mhmm ... blood orange tea with a touch of peppermint ... delicious .." enthused the orange-haired woman, lost in her morning dreams. Unlike Misaki, she slept pretty well, had no bad dreams. When she suddenly noticed how disgruntled the petite looked despite half a cup of coffee, she looked at it skeptically.

"Did you have a bad night?" She asked directly, as was her way. Misaki looked up from her cup in amazement, but when she understood the meaning of the question, her forehead immediately clouded over again. She answered the question hesitantly, apparently she really wasn't feeling very well, thought Tari.Being hesitant didn’t suit her roommate, on the contrary. In a way, the two were very similar, both very direct in their dealings with each other, something was immediately brought up.

'You should have a weapon like that,' Tari shot through her head, which made her a little sad that morning. Like Misaki, she had not yet found her weapon, which was slightly above the statistically determined average of around 15 years. Even if her roommate never told her openly, she knew very well how much it was bothering her: after all, she could empathize with it herself.

While these thoughts shot through her head, she looked back at Misaki, who still hadn't given her an answer to the question. "Have you dreamed of your gun again?", Tari paused because she didn't know which nerve she had hit, "how she lets you down again during a spellbattle?" Tari added quietly, but it did turned out to be superfluous, because Misaki gave Tari an infinitely desperate look. Involuntarily this glance touched Tari, and she got up and went to her roommate; it wasn't the first time that she had had such a dream.

Misaki suddenly started talking. "I don't know, somehow ... I'm so scared, you know? What if I don't get along with my gun? When do I get to know her? What kind of person is she? I usually don't care to create, but today ... ", she broke off, had said enough. 'So that was it. 'shot the orange-haired woman through the head. That fear that each of them felt, weapon like sacrifice. Who was your chosen partner? Everyone dreamed of him, everyone wished that this never-ending journey of search, the waiting to finally meet the person predetermined by fate, was over ... but when, you never knew.This waiting maddened even the most patient person, some spent their time just waiting for this one person, it was their purpose in life, others it drove into initiative and traveled around the world just to find the one person ... but this never changed anything. The time, everything was predetermined.

And this ignorance, Tari knew of himself, was anything but pleasant.

A bond with a partner was more than you initially assumed. How exactly, neither of them knew, but one thing was clear: It was captivating for the rest of life and went far beyond the basis of a pure partner relationship in combat. There were deep ties that bound these people together, so deep, indispensable that no outsider could understand.

And it was precisely this incomprehension, not being able to do it again, that could drive anyone to the edge of despair at a bad moment.

Still a little tired, Tari smiled. "Listen, it doesn't help you to think about it. It is predetermined that you will hit your gun at some point, and believe me, you will understand each other!" The orange-haired smiled encouragingly and took her last sip of tea, put the cup back . "Now come on, drink your coffee, it's getting cold! Besides, I'm getting hungry ..." As if on command, Misaki's stomach growled. While she looked a little puzzled, Tari laughed loudly, and after a moment Misaki had found her laugh again.

At another location of the school, in contrast to the room of our two unbound Sacrifice, there was a lot of activity and an enormous volume, after all there was only one canteen andtheexperienced a rush in the morning that some rooms were already their own Had bought a refrigerator to eat in the room. Morning grouches had a bad time here: "If you come last, eat last", the wonderful motto in golden letters was enthroned in the best place in the canteen, clearly visible to everyone, above the goal of every ambitious early bird and every other hungry student: the buffet.A room-length buffet with all sorts of offers was the central core of the canteen, which attracted all students like a magnet. But, as long and large as the offer of the good buffet was ... the only sheer queue of students who wanted to get something to eat was just as long. And in the middle of it stood a tall, blond boy who, still a bit sleepy, had just finished the seemingly eternal procedure and was only reaching for a tea bag more or less mechanically. Loaded with three meals, he went to an empty table in the corner of their tribe, where Tari and Misaki were already waiting for him. "Oh. Our delivery service is here!", Misaki said happily, and grabbed one of the plates on Daisuke's tray.

"Yeah, good morning to you guys!" He muttered, but without