WIEDERGEBURT Act VI: Chapter 8

Fay emerged from the Warp Gate to find several of her fellow Nevarian Braves waiting on the other side. She recognized Ingrid and Bjark. Both of them smiled in relief when she came out, though their expressions paled when they saw the unconscious Lin in her arms.

“Is she all right?” asked Bjark.

“What happened?” asked Ingrid.

“We fought a very powerful opponent,” Fay said, shaking as she remembered the battle against the Great Overlord of--no, she supposed it would be more appropriate to call that creature the Sekbeist Overlord now. Taking a shuddering breath, she continued. “Lin and I nearly died, but Eryk, Kari, and Siv arrived just in time to save us.”

Bjark and Ingrid looked at each other.

“I thought Master Eryk and the others had gone off somewhere,” Bjark said carefully.

“He had. I do not how they appeared in Nevaria again, but it is only thanks to them that Lin and I are alive.” She glanced back at the Warp Gate. “They are currently fighting against that monster even now as we speak.”

Fay looked away from the Warp Gate after another moment. She feared that the longer she looked at it, the stronger her desire to return and help her family would be.

“How is everyone?” asked Fay as she headed out of the Warp Room and into the hallway.

There were a lot of people standing around in this hall, most of them the displaced peoples of Nevaria. Families were huddled together. Children were crying. Parents were doing their best to console their frightened kids. Meanwhile, the Nevarian Braves, Nevarian Spiritualists, and Imperial Royal Guard were doing their best to help move these people out of the hall and into some accommodations.

“Everyone is… well, they are alive,” Ingrid said. “Given what happened, I believe all of us are fortunate to have our lives.”

“Where is Empress Hilda?” asked Fay with a nod.

“She is currently speaking with the Council of Six,” Bjark said. “I do not know what exactly is happening, but the Battling Valkyries, Paladin Sect, and Midgard Spiritual Knights are currently on the first floor. Our branch office isn’t large enough to hold everyone from Nevaria, so they’ve escorted many of them to temporary shelters until a more permanent solution can be found.”

Fay nodded as she passed a small family of four. The father was bleeding from a wound on his forehead, but he was refusing to have it healed until the water Spiritualist finished healing his wife, who was suffering from a nasty gash on her torso. Both of their kids, two boys, were silently shedding tears as their mother’s and father’s blood dripped onto the tiled floor.

“Where is Raul?” Fay asked.

“I was wondering when you’d ask about him.” Ingrid smiled softly. “You’ve trained your son very well. He’s currently working alongside the Alchemist Association to distribute pills to those in need. I do not know where he is right now, but we told him to remain at the branch office until you arrive.”

“Thank you,” Fay said softly.

“You must be exhausted,” Bjark added as he finally noticed the sag of her shoulders.

“You should get some rest, Big Sister,” Ingrid said. “Leave this matter to us for now.”

Fay wanted to argue, but she was far too tired. It was only now, after her fight, that she realized how much Spiritual Power and physical energy she’d used up during her two battles. She’d fought against several giant birds who had reached the Fourth State of Spiritualism and then nearly died in her fight against the Sekbeist Overlord. She was honestly surprised she had the strength to carry Lin.

Ingrid helped Fay get to her family’s private chamber, carrying Lin’s tail so it wouldn’t smack against anybody as they traveled up to the last floor. Their living quarters looked the same as always. Fay and Ingrid traveled into her family’s bedroom and set Lin on the bed. Her body was covered in blood, but she didn’t have the strength to clean the lamia off. Once Ingrid left, she collapsed onto the bed with her sister and passed out.

“MOM!”

It felt like only a minute passed before Fay was jerked awake by someone shouting her name. She jolted upright and looked around, only for her son to leap onto the bed and wrap his arms around her waist.

“Mom! You’re back! You’re okay! I am so glad!”

Seeing her son lying with his face buried in her chest, shedding tears as he hugged her for all he was worth, caused Fay to feel a little better. She ran her fingers through his hair, every bit as red as her own. But as time passed, Fay became distinctly aware of the aches and pains her own body felt. The consecutive battles she fought had taken a greater toll on her than she had realized.

“Ingrid tells me you were very good and have been helping the Alchemist Association distribute pills,” Fay said.

“Of course.” Raul pulled back and wiped at his eyes before smiling at her. “I am yours and Father’s son, after all. If I couldn’t at least do this much, I wouldn’t be worthy of calling myself your child.”

Fay thought her heart might melt at those words. Her son was only eight years old, but he was growing into a fine young man. He’d become a great man when he grew up.

“Is Aunty Lin okay?” asked Raul.

Looking over at the still sleeping lamia, Fay reached out and brushed the woman’s bangs away from her face. Lin shifted but didn’t wake up. Her heart constricted for a moment as she remembered what happened to Lin, how she’d almost died after being ripped in half. If it wasn’t for Eryk and the Immortal Phoenix Pill…

She shook her head and smiled at Raul. “Aunty Lin is fine. She’s just tired because of how tough our fight was.”

“But you beat them, right? Those evil bird Demon Beasts?”

“We did…”

Fay hesitated as to what she should say now. Should she tell him that she and Lin almost died because an even stronger enemy arrived? He would learn about it eventually. There was no way she could keep this hidden.

She didn’t want to scare her son, however, and so Fay decided to only focus on the battle against the elemental bird Demon Beasts. Seeing Raul’s admiring face and shining eyes as she recounted the battle eased the pain in her chest. Even so, she wondered how Eryk, Kari, and Siv were doing. They were still fighting against the Sekbeist Overlord to grant her and Lin time to escape. Would they be able to defeat him?

Fay tried her best to dispel those negative thoughts. Of course her husband and sisters would win. Eryk and Kari had been training so hard for this very moment. She needed to believe in them.

Just as her story was winding down, Lin stirred. She and Raul only had a moment to look in the lamia’s direction before the dark-skinned beauty shot up from the bed, startling them both.

“This princess wasn’t sleeping on the job, she swears!”

Fay snorted when Lin screamed. The lamia blinked several times, looked around, and spotted Fay and Raul.

“Fay… Raul… what’s going on…?” She trailed off as her eyes widened. “W-where is that strange man we were fighting?! What happened?! The last thing I remember was…”

Lin reached down to where her skin shifted into scales and shuddered, undoubtedly remembering when the Sekbeist Overlord had torn her tail from her torso.

“We’re alive,” Fay said. “Thanks to Eryk.”

“Darling?” Lin asked.

“Mom?” Raul looked at her with an obvious question in his eyes.

Fay sighed and, since it had come to this, explained what happened. She told Raul about the mysterious man who had appeared. Since he knew that his father had traveled back in time, she didn’t bother hiding anything from him. When she got to how Eryk, Kari, and Siv had arrived and saved them and were even now fighting against the Sekbeist Overlord, Lin stood up.

“Don’t even think about it,” Fay said, grabbing Lin’s wrist.

“Let go, Fay. This princess has to help her husband.” Lin’s voice was a dangerous hiss.

“Do not think you are the only one who wants to help Eryk.” Fay frowned. “I want to help him just as much as you do, but we cannot. Our job is to look after Raul and help the refugees. Eryk is the one who asked this of us.”

“But I…”

Lin’s scrunched up face and conflicted expression matched how Fay felt perfectly. She wanted to help her husband and sisters fight against that monster, but she also understood that someone had to be here, to help the refugees and look after their son, and they were the ones who had these tasks thrust upon them.

“Mom. Aunty,” Raul said in a small voice.

Lin and Fay glanced at Raul at the same time.

“Let’s see how the refugees are doing,” Fay said, standing up as she released Lin’s arm. “If it looks like we aren’t needed… it should be okay if we let at least you go back to Nevaria.”

“Fay?” Lin asked.

Fay gave Lin a pained smile. “Someone… has to remain here.”

Lin’s eyes teared up. “Fay…”

It happened just as they made this decision. Ingrid burst through the door, her face pale, body shaking as a cold sweat ran down her neck.

“B-Big Sister! It’s horrible!”

“What? What is it?” asked Fay.

“T-the Warp Gate was destroyed!”

“WHAT?!”

Fay and Lin shouted at the same time, but they didn’t hear the woman’s answer, or if she even did answer, as they were already leaving the room. They traveled quickly to the Warp Room, where they discovered something shocking.

The Warp Gate was no more.

Chunks of rubble lay strewn against the ground. She recognized them as pieces of the Warp Gate. Some pieces were simply lying on the floor, but others had become embedded into the walls, floor, and even the ceiling. It looked like a massive explosion had blasted the Warp Gate apart.

“What… happened…?” asked Fay, voice hollow.

Ingrid, who had followed them, spoke in a small voice. “W-we don’t know. I was just coming back from my rounds when I heard an explosion. I rushed into the Warp Room and… well… I found this.”

Fay reached up and clutched at her chest as she stared at the remains of the Warp Gate. She didn’t know what happened, couldn’t possibly understand how this had been destroyed, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that something terrible had happened to her family.

***

Siv was not sure how long she’d been out. The pain from her arm being devoured by the void had torn her mind asunder and caused her to lose consciousness. When she came to, the world was blurry, her body felt like led, and her arm was still missing. It was a struggle just to move. Siv whimpered as tears leaked from her eyes, but she somehow managed to summon an Immortal Phoenix Pill and pop it into her mouth.

Bliss flooded her veins the moment the pill’s medicinal strength entered her body, though it didn’t last long as the pain of regrowing her missing limb hit her like a lightning bolt. She gnashed her teeth together and tried not to cry. Her clawed hands and feet scraped against the ground, digging out gouges in the earth before she flopped onto her back.

“Ha… ha… ha…”

The pain faded after her arm grew back. She sat up and tested out her new limb, which fortunately did not feel any different from her old limb. She clenched and unclenched her fingers for a moment, watching to see if there was anything wrong with them, then nodded when she determined they were just fine.

Just as Siv was about to stand up, something slammed into her body, making her cry out, but it wasn’t an attack like she suspected at first. Force winds ripped into her body. A loud rumbling echoed from close by. It was the sound of an explosion.

Siv looked up to find Eryk and Kari, battered, bloody, and covered in wounds, but still fighting against the Sekbeist Overlord. Eryk was missing his left arm. He’d somehow created a fake arm out of lightning and water. Kari was, fortunately, not missing any limbs, but her entire front was covered in blood.

Eryk’s face was ferocious and terrifying as he thrust out his lightning-water hand, which exploded into action, elongated as it turned into something that looked like a dragon’s claw. It slammed into the Sekbeist Overlord. It did not do any damage. Siv blinked hard when a nebula swirled into existence in front of the Sekbeist Overlord and consumed the arm. It was the same power that had devoured her own arm.

As Siv focused on that power, she felt something pull against her, like there was a tug on her mind.

This power was similar to the creatures that had attacked her home. It also made her think of the power her mom wielded when she fought against them. She remembered… when the battle happened… her mother, she had… used some strange power. It wasn’t wind. What… what was it?

Siv gripped her head as something inside of her expanded. She continued watching the fight as Kari created a massive spear of golden light and threw it at the Sekbeist Overlord. Black tears appeared in the sky as the light spear traveled at a speed she could not follow. The Sekbeist Overlord had already created his shield, but this attack struck the ground instead, exploding outward and forcing him back. The nebula could consume a lot of the Spiritual Power, but quite a bit slipped past and hit him.

Her eyes were more focused on the tears.

“That is… Space…”

Space consisted of the normal three dimensions in which matter and energy existed and the eleventh dimension that existed within the third dimensional space. The theory behind spatial manipulation was to using one’s Spiritual Power to manipulate the eleventh dimension, using it to create, shape, and manipulate physical aspects of space within an area of one’s choosing.

Siv snapped out of her fugue when the Sekbeist Overlord suddenly appeared before Eryk and kicked him so hard that his body seemed to explode. She was about to scream in shock, but then Eryk’s body became lightning that wrapped around the Sekbeist Overlord. In the meantime, Kari appeared before him within a flash of light, thrust out her spear, and impaled him through the chest--or so Siv thought.

“Nice try.”

Before Kari could escape, a black beam of energy punched through her shoulder. She barely had time to scream before the Sekbeist Overlord kicked her toward the ground. She would have slammed into it, but Eryk suddenly appeared on the ground to catch her. He set Kari down, then attacked the Sekbeist with reckless abandon, firing lightning, water, light, fire, wind, and even darkness to give Kari a chance to consume several pills meant to replenish her Spiritual Power and heal her wounds.

The Sekbeist Overlord snarled in anger as he created another black shield that consumed Eryk’s attacks.

“I grow tired of your futile struggling!”

A small sphere of darkness gathered between the Sekbeist Overlord’s hands, appearing innocuous at first glance, harmless almost. Siv knew otherwise.

The Sekbeist Overlord waited until Eryk’s attacks were finished, then threw the void sphere at him. Of course, Eryk was not stupid. He used the Lightning Step to get out of the way. The sphere slammed into the ground, and the ground disappeared entirely. All that remained was a perfectly formed hole.

Appearing to grow frustrated, the Sekbeist Overlord raised his hands. Several hundred similar spheres appeared in the sky above him. They only remained there for a split second, and then they were descending toward Eryk and Kari like rain. The two did their best to avoid the attacks, making liberal use of their respective Flash Steps, but the rain covered a vast amount of space.

Kari was the first to be struck. A void sphere struck her left thigh and punched a hole clean through her. The pain was enough that Kari transformed from a being of light to one of flesh and blood. Two more spheres punctured through her body--one through her torso and another through her shoulder.

Eryk screamed and used the Flash Step to appear where Kari had fallen. He unleashed all the Spiritual Power he had. Every element within his arsenal combined to form a protective barrier around him and Kari, but it was no use. The void spheres were created from a concept far above the elements. Each sphere punched a hole clean through it. The barrier disappeared, and Siv gasped when she saw how many bloody holes had been punched through her husband.

Kari seemed relatively okay; there was still the holes in her shoulder and thigh, but somehow, Eryk appeared to have stopped any attack from reaching her.

The holes on Eryk’s body soon began healing, but it was far slower than his normally instant healing. Either he was running low on Spiritual Power or the void was difficult to heal from.

The Sekbeist Overlord was still floating in the air as he glared down at Eryk and Kari. His face was a rictus of anger.

“You have been a thorn in my side for far too long. This next attack will finish you.”

Siv did not know what he meant, but then the area around Eryk and Kari became distorted with black flames, trapping them within a realm of fire. Their screams echoed in Siv’s ears. She gritted her teeth as she struggled to stand up. She couldn’t give up here. She had to save them! But how?! How?! None of their attacks had done anything so far! The only way to defeat this man was to use a higher level concept! Like… like…

Like space.

At that moment, Siv felt the tug on her mind again, and she understood that this was the concept she had been comprehending before. The Concept of Space. She still didn’t get everything, but she understood the basics, at least enough to help out her family.

Siv raised a hand and clenched it into a fist. In that moment, the area around Eryk and KAri became calm. The black flames vanished. It was so sudden neither they nor the Sekbeist Overlord could figure out what happened.

Their enemy understood first.

“The Concept of Space?! Impossible!”

Perhaps it was because he was so surprised, but the Sekbeist Overlord didn’t seem to realize it was Siv who used that power. He created a spear with jagged edges, so large it was about the size of a building, and then he tossed it at Eryk and Kari, who were too exhausted to move.

Space around Siv distorted, and quite suddenly, she was no longer standing several dozen feet away but right in front of her husband and sister.

“S-Siv?” Eryk asked in shock.

“Please leave this to me,” Siv said as she raised her hand.

Once again manipulating space, Siv sliced out her hand, and where her hand moved, a large tear was cut. If she had to describe it, she would have said it looked like what happened when you cut open a bag. A white crack had appeared in front of her. The void spear flew into the crack and disappeared, then Siv manipulated space to create another crack right behind the Sekbeist Overlord. The void spear appeared behind him. A scream tore from the Sekbeist Overlord’s mouth as the spear pierced his body.

Siv dropped to her knees, hands pressed against the ground, shoulders and chest heaving as she tried to fight off the exhaustion she suddenly felt. It was like all the energy had been sucked from her body, leaving her dry and tired.

“S-Siv?! Are you okay?!”

While Siv was happy to hear so much worry in Eryk’s voice, she knew that he couldn’t afford to waste time worrying over her.

“Now is… your chance…” She lifted her head and looked at Eryk, stopping him in his tracks as she begged him with her eyes. “He will recover in a moment… you have to attack… now!”

Eryk was clearly still confused, but he was also an experienced warrior. He nodded once, summoned several different colored pills, and shoved them into his mouth. His adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed everything. Then he once more erupted with Spiritual Power so intense tears in space or maybe dimension appeared around him. They were black tears unlike her white ones, so she assumed these were dimensional tears rather than spatial tears.

In the next moment, Eryk was gone. Siv looked up at the Sekbeist Overlord. The man was now gripping the void spear impaled through his back, harsh shadows cast upon his feminine face as he howled in rage while ripping his own weapon from his body. He heaved a deep breath before shifting his glare over to her. Siv did not enjoy violence, but she was pleased to see the gaping hole in his torso was healing far more slowly than his other injuries.

“A drakvar discovering the Concept of Space in the middle of a battle?! How utterly ridiculous! How illogical! I will destroy you for turning my own attack against me!!”

The Sekbeist Overlord really did look like he was going to murder her, but right as he was because to attack, Eryk appeared behind him. A massive weapon shaped like the Dragon’s Tail Ruler he’d been famous for using during the Spiritual Grand Tournament was gripped firmly within his hand. It was a multi-hued creation, shining like a rainbow. Overlaying this weapon were several odd distortions that cut through this dimension.

“The only one who will be destroyed here is you!!!”

With a roar almost like that of an enraged drakvar, Eryk swung his weapon with all his might, a black tear opening up where his weapon sliced through. The Sekbeist Overlord was so surprised he froze for a single instant. That instant was all Eryk needed. His weapon slammed into the Sekbeist Overlord and tore through his body, ripping him in half.

“D-damn it! If I die… then I am taking all of you with me!!!”

As the two bloody body parts sailed through the air, an instant ripple of Spiritual Power sucked in everything around the Sekbeist Overlord. Siv only had an instant to realize what was happening. There was no time to tell Eryk or Kari behind her. All she could do was act.

Despite her exhaustion, Siv raised her hands and poured whatever Spiritual Power she could dredge up into her technique. She did not have enough Spiritual Power to transport the Sekbeist Overlord to another space, so instead, she manipulated the space around her, Eryk, and Kari. She made the space around them go out of phase with the rest of the world.

It was her hope that this would protect them, but then an explosion of void energy erupted from the Sekbeist Overlord’s torso, slammed into the small spaces she had created, and destroyed the spatial barrier like it was made of glass. As the powers of the void tore into her and Kari, Siv realized she still didn’t have a strong enough grasp on the concept of space to protect them like she’d wanted. She had been naive.

Because she still wanted to protect her family, Siv hugged Kari close and used the last bit of Spiritual Power she possessed to wrap them inside of a tiny bubble. She wanted to also reach out to Eryk and protect him. However, the moment she attempted to find him through their bond, her mind overloaded with exhaustion, and she descended into darkness.