Lith felt his Spirit and yellow eye react, but ignored them since he had no need to amplify the silver lightning further. He also felt a tingle in his black and red eyes, just like in Jiera.
‘What can this be?’ He thought. ‘How can fire and darkness interact with Life Maelstrom?’
Finding no answer and not wanting to contaminate the silver lightning with other elements, he kept making it flow from his Spirit eye to his life force, hoping to trigger a resonance effect.
When everything Lith could think of failed and he felt the power of the Life Maelstrom starting to fade, he let it access his darkness eyes. The silver lightning turned black and Lith recognized the bloodline abilities of the Jotunn from Verendi.
‘If Life Maelstrom plus darkness produces Black Lightning what would fire-‘ Lith’s train of thought derailed as he remembered witnessing Protheus’ experiments on Valeron the Second’s bloodline back at the Golden Griffon academy.
‘The golden flame! In his Bahamut form, Protheus mixed Life Maelstrom and Origin Flames to obtain those weird golden flames. Can I really do that as well?’
Meanwhile, Morok felt the urge to merge his eyes to form the seventh, but he resisted it. He used Life Maelstrom to amplify his life force and connect it with the power of his emerald scales.
For a single moment, the elemental energy in the rest of his scales reached a perfect balance. The now matching six elements fused and absorbed a spark of the Tyrant’s life force, painting all of his scales green.
Yet with Morok’s next breath, his eyes absorbed an uneven amount of elemental energy and the balance was lost. The elemental scales rejected the spark of life force and reverted to their original color.
Morok didn’t notice the phenomenon. No one did but Solus did and only because the Eyes of Menadion recorded the sudden energy spike and she could rewind the footage at will.
As for Ryla, she chose a different path.
‘I don’t have emerald eyes or scales but I know how Spirit Magic works.’ She thought. ‘Glemos, cursed be his name, taught me everything I needed to know in case something happened to him and it was up to me to help Garrik Awaken.
‘I never thought the day would come when I used this knowledge for myself.’ She focused on the elemental feathers on her wings and absorbed the surrounding world energy.
She couldn’t use Invigoration for fine-tuning the six elemental flows but her eyes were the next best thing.
She used them to identify how much elemental energy each feather drew in, turning each one of them on and off until the six kinds of feathers absorbed exactly the same amount of world energy.
Then, she channeled the accumulated power from her eyes to her body, where the Life Maelstrom was already amplifying her life force. Ryla used the silver lightning to stir the seven flows together, in the attempt to find a way to merge them into one.
Suddenly, she felt like someone had pierced her guts with a flaming knife and was twisting her insides. Ryla, doubled over in pain, releasing the elemental energy from her eyes in the form of six pillars and dispersing the Life Maelstrom before it tore her apart.
Solus reacted first, activating the Immortal Body array to mend Ryla’s internal wounds. Lith arrived second, using Invigoration to study the damage to the Fomor’s life force and doing his best to stabilize it with Body Sculpting.
“Fuck me sideways!” They said as one while doing their best to save Ryla’s life.
“Is there anything I can do?” Panic made Morok lose control of Life Maelstrom which burst into silvery sparks.
“You can shut up!” The dolby surround effect of their voices was still as creepy as the first time the Tyrant heard it but he stepped back and let them work.
‘Dammit! We forgot that despite her appearance, Ryla still belongs to the Fallen Races. Her original life force is twisted and its unfallen shape is only due to the modifications that wearing the Harmonizer for generations caused in the Balors.’ Lith cursed his own stupidity.
‘I know.’ Solus inwardly nodded. ‘She must have found a way to nudge her evolution. We don’t know if it was the right or wrong way, only that her fallen life force couldn’t take it.’
She used the Hands to manipulate the world energy so that Ryla received just enough to retain her Fomor form, energy starving her wings and eyes. At the same time, Lith used a Life Sculpture to check on the records of Ryla’s life force and restore it.
Life Sculpture was a device that Awakened used before learning how to shapeshift in order for them or their teachers to fix any damage their life forces might incur during their experiments.
‘There is a small change, but I can’t tell if it’s for the better or the worse.’ Solus recorded everything with the Eyes. ‘What I know is that Ryla’s life force is rejecting the change and she’ll die if we don’t remove it.’
The procedure was simple because the alteration was minimal and Life Sculpture was accurate down to the smallest detail.
“Thank you!” Ryla recovered quickly and hugged both Lith and Solus.
“For what?” Solus returned the embrace but didn’t feel like she deserved it. “It’s our fault you were hurt. Fixing our own mistake is the least we can do.”
“I’m not talking about that.” Ryla shook her head. “Sure, this can’t work for me, but it might work for Garrik! He has all of my powers but his life force is still malleable and possesses the best Harmonizer Glemos ever created.
“Maybe, just maybe, if we teach him never to open his Tyrant’s emerald eye and make him train like I was doing as he grows up, not only will his life force stabilize but also move on the right path for evolution!”
Ryla didn’t care if that path was precluded to her. The thought of her child free from the prison of the mana geyser as he became the first perfectly evolved human filled her heart with joy.
‘I swore that I’d give Garrik a life better than my own and this might be his first chance at it!’ She thought.
“Guys, I know this might sound stupid but I want to ask anyway.” Morok scratched his head in embarrassment. “I was thinking, since you are great at Body Sculpting, can’t you make a comparative study of Ryla’s fallen and unfallen life forces?
“I mean, what if you find the portion of her life force that was altered by her experiment and apply the change to her fallen form? This way, when the world energy turns her into a Fomor, there would be no resistance and she can keep practicing with us.”
“This is not stupid at all.” Lith rubbed his chin. “Quite the contrary, it’s very complicated. We can’t just alter the fallen life force because there’s no telling if her unfallen life force would retain the change after shapeshifting.
“More likely, we must find a modification that will reshape itself in the correct form when Ryla goes from Balor to Fomor.”
