“Hey hey…tell me what you see in my future~”

Sitting in the middle of a six-seated bar table as Augen pinched a glass filled with a red liquid in between his fingers. The glass itself angled on the verge of spilling over, yet he still managed to keep all of the fluids contained within without a single drop escaping. Hearing the question from the curious stranger, he turned and sensed the girl with a dwindling Wave and a slightly rascally voice.

“That will cost you one drink, and maybe a little more.” Augen said, downing the red liquid before the glass smoothly transitioned between his pale-skinned fingers and planted firmly on the table in front of him.

“Only if what you said is accurate~” She rested her elbows on top of the table as she closely observed the green-haired man. He had a little mustache growing out, though it was clear that he wasn't exactly used to taking care of it. He had long green hair that were tied together by the same kind of bandanna that also wrapped around his eyes. However, beyond that, he is equally mysterious and handsome, “Say…what’s going to happen to me in the next thirty seconds?”

“I would think you will move yourself a bit closer to me.” Augen looked down and spoke with a quiet voice before he tapped his knuckles on the table. The girl leaned in with a confused look before Augen reached over slightly, pulling her gently by the hips as a drunk slammed his face against the counter where she was standing at and rebounded off behind them, his hairy hands holding onto a broken nose.

“Ouch ouch ouch…” He groaned when an automated Cast that were written into the bar table extended out with some Wave lines to help him up.

“Impressive, and very aggressive.” She looked at him with bright eyes as his ears twitched.

“I will take that drink now,” Augen said, and the girl's eyebrows raised with her Wave signature vibrating excitedly. She placed a pair of coins along with the table before the bartender sent a pair of glasses with local fruit cider mixed with a stronger concoction over, "Now...what have you bought me?"

"You can tell what's going to happen, but not what you are about to drink?" She joked before sliding one of the glass over.

"When you can do what I do," Augen turned to face her fully, "You'd appreciate a surprise from time to time."

The girl looked between his pale lips and the glass, and she downed her drink before holding it in her mouth and reaching over with both hands. Augen stood still when her lips pressed against his, and a smooth release of the sweet drink jetted into his mouth.

They split that glass about fifty-fifty before the girl finally pulled back.

"How's that for a surprise?" She giggled.

"Surprisingly pleasant." Augen flushed before he looked down at grabbed the glass.

“So…when am I going to find a good man?” She asked, stealing some of Augen's own drink.

“Certainly not here…” Augen allowed her before he took a good sniff. Despite the initial tastes, he preferred telling apart drinks through his sense of smell.

It’s the Xia Sunrise, flavored with syrups made from local berries. A most general of drinks, and nothing too spectacular. Happy with his conclusions, Augen continued slowly, “but as you head out on your next travels, you will have multiple opportunities. I would suggest you stay away from Necrovia, and that you go up North into Basha first.”

“Hey, I was from Necrovia.” The girl complained.

“I know.” Augen said, lowering his voice slowly, “I also knew that you escaped from the kingdom to experience what’s out here.”

“And what might you say is out there?” She asked, reaching over and placing her hand next to Augen’s.

“So far, I only know one thing." Augen said, turning his hand over and crossing his fingers with hers.

"And what's that?"

"A good night.”

They didn't stay in the bar for long, as she took him back to her room at a nearby inn. Her Wave's signature remained similarly weak yet stimulated as her soft body pressed against his. With his every movement, the Wave signature seemed to oscillate around the baseline to that specific rhythm, and yet it was nothing compared to her.

Nothing compared to what he felt from Fatera.

It has now been months since they departed, and Augen had always wondered whether things would be different had he chosen a different path. As he laid still on the bed that now started to smell like their combined sweats, the girl rested beside him with a hand placed over his chest.

“So…what are you thinking about now?” She asked, “The future?”

“The past.” Augen murmured as she caressed his soft stomach, the definitions he once had from Fatera’s training now fully diminished, “…I don’t know if I made a bad decision and hurt someone I care about…”

“You player~” She rolled away and yawned, “Sleeping with one girl and thinking about another.”

“Sorry…” Augen placed a hand over his forehead, “Wait…how did you know it’s a girl…”

He still remembered that day. The day of the Incident, the day when PORA successfully infiltrated and destroyed the Infinite Academy right as the Summer Selection was going on. Then, Fatera saved him from falling to his death before they were then picked up by Yan the Lossless.

“That’s crazy…” The girl next to him said, “I haven’t heard of Yan the Lossless, but he sounds like a big deal…”

“I suppose you can say that…” Augen said.

“Is he as strong as the Sky Guardian corps?” She whispered into his ear, and the warmth from her body started to become greater with every second.

“Some might say he is far stronger.” Augen shrugged as something slowly awakened within him, “Some might say he’s the reason that the Corp was even formed in the first place.”

“Well, I heard what remained of the Corps had started to gather around here after some change in Yarka…” She scratched her face when Augen suddenly rolled to the side and pressed himself over her, “Fancy a round two?”

As their bodies joined together and their Wave became one yet again, a swirl of flow flakes floated around the bed before rings of light formed around what was once Augen’s eye sockets. Then, his eyes were opened to yet another fragment of the future.

And there he was, sitting alone by the seaside ports as the waves crashed into the rocks underneath his feet. The droplets in the ocean water occasionally brushed against his bare feet when suddenly, a trio of shadows emerged from beyond the horizon.

It’s the same visions again. Every time he bordered between ectasy and reality, between waking days and sleepless nights, his Casts would spontaneously activate.

Those figures looked familiar, with two boys and one girl that reminded him of times that he thought he had lost. The boy in the middle had black hair, brown eyes, and a glorious pair of eyebrows, and the girl to his left had black hair with silver strands in between and grey eyes that looked like gemstones that rich girls at Eternal Xia particularly fancy. And the second girl to his right had long dark blonde hair with dark tentacle patterns under her right eye and a curvy body.

It was only within his glance through to the windows of the future that Augen can truly know what his friends actually look like.

“I…I missed you all.” Augen opened his mouth, and suddenly, he felt a cool air blowing into his face as the sounds of the ocean waves became more and more realistic around him.

He blinked, feeling the muscles around his eye sockets twitch when suddenly, the Wave fields around him started to consolidate and the colors started to darken. The sounds became less and less ethereal with his every breath, and he felt the rough wood underneath his hands.

Somehow, someway, he had ended up here by the docks at the exact same place he foresaw. He wondered what had transpired between spending the night with the girl he didn’t even recall the name of and him making his way here. His throat felt dry, and a banging headache accompanied him.

Lying back, he let the morning sunlight shine over his body as he slowly took off the white bandanna around his eyes and exposed the scarring over his eye sockets to its warmth. He heard the footsteps of the morning walkers behind him, and all of them evaded him as they would any other drunk.

“Perhaps this is who I am now…perhaps that’s why she left me…”

On that day, Augen waited along the bedrocks by the streams. He waited for her to show up like she always did, perhaps she will choose to appear behind him suddenly and freak him out, or perhaps she will land like an asteroid right in front of him and push him back with the shockwave. Perhaps she will declare her glorious entrance in some elaborate and overly dramatic way.

But none of that happened. Without a word, she simply vanished from his life, almost as if nothing had happened between them.

Augen waited for days and nights, and he looked far and wide into the Wave field around the woods. However, he couldn’t sense her anymore. Instead, he drew out his stack of playing cards, trying to peek into his past and the future to find traces of Fatera. When he neared memories of her, her face suddenly started to become blurry, and her outlines were replaced by someone else he did not recognize.

Yan must have been doing something to mask Fatera from Augen’s forbidden Casts, and he had no way to work around it. He had no idea what he needed to do. And that only made it all the worse.

If he were to be strong enough to counter Yan the Lossless, then Fatera would have come with him.

Then, months later, when he found himself walking along the dunes of the Necrovian desert, he met someone else who also left him soon after.

“Perhaps that’s the way the story goes for me…” Augen concluded as he lied down, “Perhaps there was no point in fighting my fate…perhaps I am meant to be insignificant…What’s the point trying anymore…”

He felt the splinters of the wooden planks along the docks poke into his back as he groaned. He tried to ignore it, when one found its way to a sensitive spot on his back, forcing him to sit up suddenly. However, the burst of momentum was way too much as his entire body tipped forward and he dived straight towards the waves below.

“A fitting end for a tragic man, I suppose…” Augen sighed when suddenly, he felt the Wave fields in front of him starting to shift, and a familiar-feeling purple fluid formed on the surface of the sea, catching him before transporting him to somewhere different.

“Oh! Look who we’ve got here!” Wu’s excited voice came from the side as Lera leaned forward, her familiar presence in the Wave warming Augen’s mind with Ver also exiting her meat-suit and glancing over Augen’s body, “I think it’s not just any random people with a suicide wish! It’s Augen!”

“He’s got long hair now.” Lera noticed as Augen scanned around him before grabbing the white bandanna and tying it back around his eyes, "And maybe a few stowaways pounds."

“You…you are here…?” He said, grabbing onto Lera’s feet, “You are really here?”

“Yeah, we are.” Wu said, squatting down and placing his hand on Augen’s shoulder, and in some places, he seemed even skinnier than when they first met, “How have you been?”

Augen cracked a big smile, and he glanced towards the void in the Wave that is Wu, “Shit, to be honest.”