“That’s Lith’s voice! Something must have happened to him.” Quylla triple checked the Mana Reactor.
A lot of red lights signaled that the device had stopped working and the lack of all the buzzing sounds that had previously filled the air confirmed the success of her strategy.
Yet instead of declining, the rumble of the earth was actually worse than before.
Cursing her bad luck, she ran toward the room where the fight was taking place despite the fear of the operating table and of the blue monster who wanted to steal her life that still burned vividly in her mind.
“Wait, I don’t think you should go. You can’t possibly help him!” Morok ran after Quylla, trying to stop her. He could imagine how hard Lith had worked to hide his real nature and knew that the Odi wasn’t an enemy that could be underestimated.
On top of that, even though he couldn’t see the silver and the black pillar with his human eyes, he could feel an enormous power at work. Such a small human like Quylla was likely to be incinerated simply by stepping too close to such a force of nature.
He grabbed her by the shoulder, forcing Quylla to stop. She followed her father’s teaching, using the Ranger’s yanking motion to add his momentum to her own and kick him in the nuts with all the strength she had.
Quylla was tired of his non-sense. She wouldn’t waste a single moment listening to Morok, not while she could actually do something to help her family. If Lith and Phloria lost the battle, she was dead anyway.
Quylla much preferred spending her last moments with those she loved rather than with an annoying prick. Morok yelped while grabbing his crotch and fell to his side. Beast or not, enchanted protection or not, it would take him some time to recover.
When Quylla opened the metal door, she couldn’t believe her own eyes. Phloria was still there, sitting on the ground and chanting one spell after the other despite the tears streaming from her eyes.
The room seemed to have come straight out of a nightmare, filled with eyes of all shapes and sizes staring at the fight while inhuman screams coming from its walls filled the air. In the middle of it, someone that looked like the Odi Quylla knew but who wasn’t him was battling to the death with a monstrous creature.
Phloria wasn’t crying because she was afraid of death, nor because she had any idea of what had just happened. She was crying because the thing in front of her, somehow, was exactly as she had always imagined Lith to be.
She had always known that he was filled with a pain and anguish that he usually hid from the rest of the world, something that she had only caught a glimpse of from time to time. Now it was all laid bare in front of her, in a storm of claws, snarls, and fury.
It was the most inhuman and yet human being she had ever seen. She was crying because the darkness surrounding them resonated with that pain, allowing Phloria to share his grief and shed the tears that Lith couldn’t anymore.
After the first lightning, Rizo didn’t have the time to cast another as Lith had darted towards him, in a flurry of Origin Flames and fists. The first punch had been strong enough to lift Rizo from the ground, sending him crashing against the back wall.
His once prized Fortress Armor was now deeply bent and bore the mark of Lith’s fist.
Rizo’s earth and light fusion allowed him to remain conscious, but the strike had brought the both of them outside the God’s Will array, forcing him to undo the old magical formation and create a new one.
That split second had been long enough that Lith had struck the Odi’s face so hard and so many times that he almost ripped Rizo’s head off. One of his eyes was swollen closed, many of his teeth were now on the floor while his nose, broken in many places, bled profusely.
Rizo hadn’t taken the onslaught idly. He was a master swordsman and his blade was still in perfect condition. The Eternal Blade was the apex of the Odi weaponry. He had stabbed, cut, and deflected Lith’s arms with each and every one of his attacks, but the monster didn’t care.
The silvery armor covering his curved scales deflected most of the impacts and every wound started to heal the moment it was opened. Lith was using darkness fusion, but it wasn’t the lack of pain that allowed him to fight in such a frenzied way.
It was the unbridled fury for having once again lost someone precious to him.
‘Solus is gone. I will not hear her laugh or cry anymore. She will not be with me the next time I’m happy or sad. She will not scold me when I do something stupid or insensitive. I’m once again alone and it’s all your fault!
‘You took her away from me!’ Lith thought while his hands turned the Orichalcum of the now dead Fortress armor to shreds, bringing him just a few centimeters away from the beating heart of his hated enemy.
Until that moment, Rizo had completely focused on protecting his head, but cuts and bruises were being inflicted upon his now exposed flesh, forcing him to lower his blade.
‘You have to end this quickly!’ Guuna said in his head. ‘Your precious little wench has destroyed the Body-Swapping machine and the Mana Reactor has stopped working. Once the stored mana goes dry, you’ll not last a second!’
Rizo hated to agree with her just as he hated the mage’s guts. Yet there was no point in denying the truth, so he used first magic and the green array to surround himself with white flames, forcing the monster to retreat and giving himself the time he needed to heal his injuries.
***
The first thing that Solus saw when she woke up from the darkness that had shrouded her, was a luscious sea of green. The soft grass tickled her feet while a gentle breeze made her light bronze hair dance in the air.
She had no idea where she was, but she felt at peace. All of her pains and worries appeared like something distant in the past. The only thing she wanted was to lay down on the grass and stare at the blue sky above her head.
“Am I dead?” She asked while the memories of the recent events made her snap out of her reverie. “This is nothing like what I saw in Lith’s memories and… By my maker, my skin is pink. I’m human! I’m really human!”
She tried to conjure a mirror of ice to look at her own face, but nothing happened. She couldn’t feel her mana, nor did any of her mystical senses seem to work. To make matters worse, the only thoughts she could hear were her own.
“Oh dear, it’s been so long since the last time I had a visitor. Let me wear something you can relate to.” A disembodied voice said inside Solus’s head, making her yelp in surprise.
The ground rose, twisted, and turned, until the lump of mud in front of Solus looked exactly like Elina down to the smallest detail. The only difference was her hair being of the six colors of the elements instead of light-brown with shades of red.
4th chap this time extra and unscheduled. I know it’s my rest day, but I like to keep the numbers even rather than leave half chapter hanging.
