“Yeah, right. Fighting against someone with a stronger core and body, with centuries of experience above me and unknown powers is the right thing to do. For a moron.” Lith snorted while taking his time.
The Sapphire Dragon reverted into Ajatar’s human form, that of a man 1.82 (6′) tall with blonde hair, pale skin, and blue eyes. A bright light coursed throughout his body and radiated from his eyes.
At first glance, it looked like mana, but Life Vision confirmed that the Ajatar-echo’s core was bright violet. Also, the light pulsated under his skin with a rhythm that Lith recognized as that of a heartbeat.
After a while, the man turned back into a Dragon and so on.
“It’s the same thing Friya saw about Faluel. Maybe Thrud was right and the secret to becoming a Divine Beast really is in the blood.” Lith turned toward Elina-Mogar, wondering if the same principle would also apply to his parents.
Suddenly he felt deeply invested in the matter.
After making sure there was nothing more that he could learn from the first two answers, he moved on to the last one.
“Gold against copper that this is another death trap.” He said before taking the final step.
“You’re on.” Mogar was done with her tea and was reading a book whose title was so blurred that it was incomprehensible.
The last energy sphere burst forward like a storm. Darkness magic seeped inside Lith’s eyes, mouth, and ears, sapping his strength. Bolts of lightning burned his flesh, sending his muscles into a spasm.
Heat rays bombarded him from every side, piercing through his armor and then switching into minuscule hard-light constructs that clogged his blood flow causing dozens of strokes at the same time.
Earth stuck to his joints and, boosted by the light element, attempted to rearrange the minerals in his bones to turn them into stone. At the same time, a cold wave struck at him from the outside while also turning his blood into ice shards that pocked through his skin.
If not for Full Guard warning Lith of every step of the onslaught the moment it happened and the numerous precautions he had taken, that single spell would have been lethal.
The mana boosting the Voidwalker armor repelled most of the external attacks while the Origin Flames stored in his heart spread along the blood vessels, canceling the effects on his internal organs.
Lith also conjured a Spirit Barrier to stop whatever was going to come next, saving his life. The moment the caster felt the six elements losing power, he recalled them into an emerald sphere that instantly turned into a spinning energy ray.
The Spirit Barrier held, but the pressure of the blast was focused on a single point, draining the little energy Lith had left after surviving the surprise attack. Then, in a disturbingly familiar way, the emerald turned into a deep shade of blue.
The ray managed to pierce both the barrier and Lith’s boosted armor, just to find a hard-light construct underneath and a skin-tight Spirit Barrier right below the construct.
The spell ruptured Lith’s left kidney and collapsed his lung, but thanks to the multiple barriers its destructive power dissipated before reaching his heart.
Lith was now too far to elicit a second attack from the embodiment of the answer and the healing spell he had at the ready started to heal the damage as soon as he was at a safe distance.
“Eight… elements? What… the… fuck?” His words were thoughts yet he stuttered nonetheless.
Now that the mass of mana had been recalled and condensed into an ever-changing sphere, the figure behind the attack was visible and made Lith want to puke.
It was humanoid but with a completely black skin and claw-ending hands.
His mouth was filled with pristine white fangs that formed a cruel grin filled with malice. Two black membranous wings came out of his back, furled so tightly that Lith would have missed them if not for the pristine background
Above his head, the same blue energy that appeared in the sphere along with the other seven elements burned in the form of a perfect crown.
The figure lacked the lower part of his body so Lith wasn’t sure of who or what he was seeing, only that the resemblance with his mad brother made him sick.
“Meln? Meln is the one supposed to be the master of Void Magic?” Lith’s voice oozed so much venom that the ground at his feet sizzled. “If this is a joke it’s not funny. He’s not smart enough to understand tier one Void Magic even with Night’s help!”
“Do you really expect me to answer that?” Mogar put the book on the coffee table, watching the two monsters staring at each other in hatred.
Without his knowledge, Lith had shapeshifted into the Eldritch form of Derek McCoy, his head ablaze with black-violet flames as he conjured small spheres of Chaos and Decay around himself, ready to attack.
In the Mindscape there was no real elemental energy, it was just a manifestation of the psyche of Mogar’s guests and of the answers they sought. The Chaos and Decay were respectively Derek’s hatred and pain, embodying his desire to make everyone suffer like he did.
“No, I don’t.” Lith/Derek said, recognizing the sound of his old voice after calming down a bit.
It would have been an impossible feat if not for the fact that the longer he stared at the creature, the less it looked like Orpal.
“Where are the horns? Where is his beloved spear? Heck, where is Night?” Lith stared at the chest of the monster, noticing no trace of the black crystal amid its perfect muscles.
“Also, the last time I’ve seen him, he had only four flames above his head. Assuming he can reach seven, they wouldn’t form a perfect circle. Last, but not least, I refuse to believe that such a moron can discover the eighth element of magic, assuming it exists.”
Lith healed himself completely before taking several deep breaths in a failing struggle to regain his cool. The thing in front of him was unlikely to be his brother, but the mere possibility was enough to drive him insane.
Lith circled the creature many times, noticing many inconsistencies but none of them was enough to put him at ease.
“What if this is Meln at his full potential after he reaches the violet?”
“What if it’s your brother Aran?” Mogar said after the tirade started to bore her. “What if it’s your secondborn?”
“Bullshit!” Lith replied in outrage. “Aran would never make that face and neither would a kid of mine. I’ve already seen that very expression, I just have to remember where.”
“You forget that this is a realm of possibilities. Almost anything is possible, the odds are just very low.” Mogar countered pointedly.
“Fine.” The idea of Meln mastering Void Magic was revolting, but that of Aran turning into such a monster was even worse.
Lith focused on the pulsing sphere, trying to commit to memory every detail that Solus might later need while examining his mind. Then, he looked at the echo like it was Aran, trying to figure out what had happened to him and how he could prevent such a possibility from turning into reality.
