WIEDERGEBURT Act VI: Chapter 6

Lin quickly merged back with the earth and felt out the earth bird’s presence. She wondered if she should give the damn thing a name, but she also didn’t think it was worth the effort since it would be a dead bird soon enough.

The earth bird was not hard to feel out. When you entered the Fourth State of Spiritualism and merged with your element, anyone who had also reached the Fourth State could feel you whenever you merged. All Lin had to do was feel the earth surrounding her.

The hard part was kicking the bird out.

Lin extended her will into the earth, grabbed hold of it, molded it, and transformed it into a spear that she threw into the will of her opponent. She felt more than heard the loud cry of pain from her enemy. Then an even more vicious attack than her own came at her mind. It felt like a billion earthen needles stabbing into her head. However, if there was one thing she learned about her element, it was that the earth endured, and she would become like the earth.

The attack faded from her mind, the feeling of needles disappearing. Once she finished enduring, Lin went on the attack, imagining two large walls closing in on her opponent’s mind and to squish him between them. The earth bird resisted. Any living creature would resist this feeling, but Lin imposed her will upon her enemy to keep him in place.

She could feel the earth bird grow panicked, hear the squawk in her mind, and she was not about to let it escape. Lin pushed further. The walls closed in. Her mental wall of earth was breaking the will of her opponent, and since this was a battle of wills to control the earth, all the mental feedback the earth bird felt was transmitted into physical pain.

The earth bird finally couldn’t take the attack. With a squawk, it rushed out of the earth, erupting from the ground like magma flowing out of a volcano.

Lin grinned.

She didn’t relent and took direct control of the earth now that her opponent was gone. Her Spiritual Power surged even as she absorbed more from her surroundings, and she molded it to her will, creating a massive hand that emerged from the ground and latched onto the earth bird’s left leg.

“Kweeehhhh?!”

The bird’s startled screech soon became a scream of agony as another hand erupted from the ground, grabbed its other leg, and pulled. It struggled as the hands pulled it back to the ground. The hurried flaps of its wings caused several gusts, but this bird had no control over wind. It could only manipulate the earth.

While it was startled at first, the earth bird soon seemed to remember that it also had control over the earth. The stone hands crumbled away as it overwrote her will with its own. Lin clicked her tongue, but then she launched a fist that slammed into the bird’s underside. Another startled and pained cry escaped its mouth. She had been hoping it would pierce the creature’s chest, but the bird had transformed its body into the earth element. Striking its chest was now like trying to punch a mountain’s worth of dirt compressed into a ten meter space.

If Lin wasn’t merged into the earth right now, she would have growled. Instead, her Spiritual Power exploded as ten stone hands rose from the surface and attacked the earth bird. The Demon Beast squawked as numerous hands attempted to grab it. For a creature with an earth element, it was awfully good at flying. She wondered about that. Why in the nine realms would a bird with an earth element be able to fly? Wouldn’t it make more sense of it was a flightless bird like those chickens she loved to eat?

Well. Whatever.

Because there were not more civilians anywhere near her, Lin did not hesitate to pull more Spiritual Power from the earth, using it to create everything from giant hands to earth spears that shot from the ground. She even decided to go all out and create a massive serpent made of stone.

The serpent was close to twenty meters in length. She’d based its design off Muhammad’s massive snake form. That old man had been a wimp, but she liked the idea of being a gigantic snake. Since she couldn’t transform into one yet because she didn’t know how, she had decided to simply create one out of the earth.

Her serpent opened its mouth wide, clamped down on the earth bird’s body while it was distracted dodging her stone hands, and attempted to slowly crush it in its grip. She had created a row of sharp teeth by condensing several tons of stone into tiny teeth half a meter large. Despite the strength of her serpent’s teeth, however, it was not the earth bird who found its body being punctured. It was her serpent’s teeth that shattered to pieces.

Once free, the earth bird kicked her serpent in the mouth. Lin didn’t think it would do much, but then her serpent’s head shattered to pieces. She would have howled in outrage as her now headless serpent broke apart, but she had neither the time nor the mouth.

Because she couldn’t afford to let her opponent have even a moment to himself, Lin continued to attack it with spears and stone hands, but she also used this time to think.

This wasn’t working.

She had to do something else.

The biggest problem she was running into was that this creature’s control over the earth element was just as good if not better than her own. She was only able to kick it out because her will was stronger. That meant using the earth was not going to cut it. She needed to think of something else.

But what…?

As Lin was thinking about that, she thought about what kind of powers her species had. Lamia had control over three elements: earth, darkness, and poison, which was a combination of the earth and darkness elements. She hadn’t used poison in a long time, but maybe that would work. It was worth a shot.

Lin kept up her assault, but now she created two stone serpents instead of just one. This time, however, she made their teeth using the poison element. She didn’t have eyes right now, so she couldn’t see it, but she knew that her two serpents right now had acidic green teeth. The poisonous hissing sensation ran through the earth and into her mind.

Fifteen more stone hands erupted from the ground and grabbed at the earth bird, who tried its best to dodge. Lin did not worry about actually grabbing it. She hid her serpents behind two large buildings and corralled the bird toward them. Once the bird was in position, she commanded her serpents to attack.

“KWWEEEHHH?!”

Lin could have done a victory dance as her serpents’ teeth sank into the flesh of the earth bird. It tried to harden its body with the earth element, to make it tougher than stone, but her poison had a highly acidic property that melted through even the toughest materials. Stone. Metal. Because poison was made from the earth and darkness elements, there was very little that could withstand it.

Blood gushed from the earth bird and splattered on the ground. Lin directed her serpents to drag the earth bird back down, where she impaled it upon several hundred spikes covered in poison. The creature shrieked again, but its pained cries were growing weaker as it lost more and more blood, until it eventually could only whimper and occasionally shudder. Lin waited several seconds longer. She waited until she could feel its life eb completely. Once she was sure it was dead, she removed her will from the earth and emerged from the ground.

Lin had been inside of the ground for the entire battle, so she hadn’t actually been able to see what happened, but now that she was out in the open, she could see how much destruction their fight had caused. Buildings lay in ruins, the ground was ruptured with chasm-sized cracks, and several large piles of dirt lay strewn everywhere. It looked like the sandbox of a deranged child.

“This princess… did not mean to cause so much damage.” Lin scratched the back of her head. “Empress Mother won’t ask her to pay for all the damages, will she? No, no. Surely not. This princess was only doing what she had to do. Yes. That bird would have destroyed even more of the city if this princess didn’t stop him. Empress Mother will definitely commend this princess for a job well done. Probable. Maybe. She hopes.”

As Lin did her best to prop her flagging confidence, a loud cry echoed around her, directing Lin’s attention away from her worries and toward the battle taking place in the skies above. A bright ball of flame was attacking a pair of birds who could control lightning and light respectively… and it was losing. Even as she watched, the ball of flame was struck by a powerful beam of light that sent it hurtling toward the ground.

“Now isn’t the time to get caught up in my own worries!” Lin smacked her cheeks. “Hold on, Fay! This princess is coming!”

***

Fay grunted as she pried her body from the crater it made when she received a tail smack from the lightning bird. Her flames flickered briefly before going out. She’d been fighting on full-blast nonstop for the past however long she’d been locked in combat with these two. She honestly didn’t know how long that had been. It could have been minutes or even hours.

Summoning an Advanced Spiritual Recovery Pill and popping it into her mouth, Fay sighed in relief as the medicinal strength gushed down her throat, settled in her stomach, and instantly restored all of her Spiritual Power.

These pills were something she made for Eryk. They were the strongest recovery pills she’d been able to create using the Rainbow Life Chrysanthemum and Nine Colored Phoenix Tailbone. Because of the scarcity of the ingredients, she had only been able to make two dozen. She’d received a small bit of each ingredient from Catherine in exchange for several lost alchemy recipes. She, her husband, and her sisters had received four pills.

In short, she needed to be very careful when using them.

With her Spiritual Powers recovered, Fay once more erupted with Spiritual Power and fire. She shot into the air and soared straight at the lightning bird.

Her opponent was not stupid. It saw her coming. She was hard to miss.

A powerful bolt of lightning erupted from its body, flying toward her as it took the shape of a phoenix. Fay supposed she could call this technique it was using Lightning Phoenix. In either event, since Fay could not afford to back off, she charged forward. Spiritual Power circulated through her body, heating up the flames and making them change from vibrant orange to intense blue and then pure white.

She slammed into the Lightning Pheonix and then burst right through it. She didn’t even stop as she increased her speed by shooting fire from her hands and feet.

The lightning bird squawked in surprise, but that transformed into a squeal of pain when she struck the creature with all her considerable power.

All the other times she struck this creature, it had managed to fend her off by creating lightning armor around its body. This time, when her attack struck, it did not do that. Maybe it didn’t have time, or maybe it didn’t have enough Spiritual Power. Fay didn’t care. Her flame projectile of a body blasted straight through it, opening a gaping hole in its chest and back that she could see through. There was no blood. The wound had been completely cauterized. However, her attack had destroyed its heart.

Fay released her body from the Fourth State of Spiritualism, breathing deeply and heavily as she watched the lightning bird descended from the sky. Sparks and arcs of lightning erupted from its dying body. It made her think of an ember. It flared very briefly before dying. She thought it was kind of beautiful, but it was also a little sad, though she still couldn’t find it in herself to feel sympathetic toward this beast after what it had done to her home.

The lightning surrounding the creature died by the time its cooling corpse struck the ground. Fay sighed in relief, then remembered she had been fighting another enemy. Why hadn’t it attacked? She turned around in search of the light bird and discovered that it was being attacked by several giant serpents and multiple massive hands.

“Lin…”

Fay’s determination hardened as she realized her sister had finished off her enemy and was now keeping the last one occupied. No wonder she had been able to defeat this thing without interference.

At the moment, the light bird was creating intense beams of light that sheered through the hands and serpents with ease. It also attacked the ground, but Lin was merged with the earth, her conscience buried so deep that Fay had doubts about whether such an attack could do her harm. In either event, she could not just stand there and let her sister do all the work.

Bursting into flames once more, Fay shot into the sky, higher and higher, the air pushing against her body. She didn’t stop until the air became so thin that her flames threatened to go out.

From so high up, Nevaria looked like nothing more than a speck. She could see everything from up here. The Demon Beast Mountain Range and its vastness, the ocean that was even bigger than the continent she lived on, and the stars high above her head. She felt so small this high up.

But now wasn’t the time to let herself become distracted by her own smallness.

With determination burning inside of her, Fay shot down, back toward the ground. The friction of her flaming body striking the atmosphere caused the air around her to burst. White and red flames exploded around her. A tail like the tail end of a comet trailed above her head as Nevaria came closer and closer.

She could see the light bird now. It was still fighting against Siv and her stone attacks. Hands made of granite grabbed at it. Earth spikes jutted from the city floor to skewer the creature, though it constantly flitted away. It disappeared and reappeared seemingly at random, though she knew it was simply moving at the speed of light.

It hadn’t noticed her yet.

Good.

While Lin seemed to have little luck in attacking it, she did an excellent job of keeping it distracted. Fay watched its movements, memorizing how it moved, and predicted her next attack to coincide with when and where it would appear.

Just as she expected, the light bird seemed to teleport away from an attacking stone hand, appearing within a burst of light and opening its mouth to sheer through the offending limb with a beam of light. That was when Fay struck. Her body slammed into the bird’s back like a meteorite.

This creature must have been a lot sturdier than the light beast because she didn’t blow a hole through it. Her heels dug into the bird’s back, the sound of snapping echoing ominously loudly around her, and then the bird was launched toward the ground--right into a poison-coated spear that Lin summoned. Whether her sister knew what was about to happen or if she’d just gotten lucky was unknown. Either way, the spear pierced the bird’s chest and went straight through its back.

Fay landed on the ground and transformed back into flesh and blood. She almost stumbled. While she still had plenty of Spiritual Power thanks to her Advanced Spiritual Recovery Pill, the battle had been physically and mentally taxing. With a sigh, she popped a few Mental Recovery Pills and Physical Stamina Pills into her mouth, chewing on them and swallowing as Lin emerged from the ground beside her.

“We did it,” Lin said with a grin.

“We did,” Fay admitted with a smile.

“You were really strong,” Lin added. “This princess has always been jealous of how strong you are, but now she understands that your strength is completely earned. You are much stronger than this princess is.”

Fay shook her head. “I think in terms of combat, I might be a little better than you, but you have a lot more Spiritual Power than I do. You also have the advantage of an element that exists everywhere. The only place where I’d become invincible was if I fought inside of a volcano or something.”

“Heh heh heh. You think so?”

Fay almost rolled her eyes when Lin rubbed the back of her head and tried to act bashful. This lamia didn’t have a bashful bone in her body.

“I never expected there would be two more people aside from the inexperienced god child who could defeat my thralls,” a voice suddenly said. It was an odd voice. It sounded like there were two people speaking at once. This voice was at both light and dark, divine and devilish. It sent a chill down Fay’s spine.

Fay looked up to discover a luminous being floating in the air, clad in a white robe, and possessing a beautiful visage that seemed to combine the best feminine and masculine traits. His hair was long and silver. It descended from his head like an effervescent waterfall. A pair of long and pointed ears emerged from either side of his head, parting his hair. He didn’t wear any shoes. His bare feet looked like delicate crystals.

And yet…

For however beautiful this man was, something about him intensely disturbed Fay. The white of this man’s eyes was instead black, and the blackness surrounded blood red eyes filled with malevolence, as if the intent to cause harm and death was physically manifested within them. Not a ripple appeared around his body. Fay couldn’t even sense a speck of Spiritual Power, but that only made her more wary.

“Who in the nine realms are you?!” Lin demanded.

Fay wanted to tell her sister to shut up, but her body was held in place by some indescribable fear.

“I suppose introductions are in order.” The man tilted his head. “You may call me the Great Overlord of the Seventh Plain.”

Fay sucked in a breath. This was the man Eryk told them about, the one who killed Kari in his previous life, who set a good man on the path of revenge, and who was responsible for all her husband’s suffering. In some ways, Fay was grateful to this man. It was because of him that Eryk had gone back in time, met her, and they fell in love… but she still hated him for what he’d done to the man she loved.

“And what do you want with us?” asked Fay.

“I sensed the god child’s presence here,” the Great Overlord of the Seventh Plain said, staring at her with a frown marring his lips. “I have been searching for him all this time, traveling across dimensions and space to find him. I finally found a trace of his presence here and came to this tiny city. Lo and behold, I did discover the god child, but I did find you two. I can sense the god child on you. His presence permeates you both. I can only assume that you are his women.” A cruel smile appeared on his lips. “I wonder if I can lure the god child to me by killing the two of you.”

Fay did not know what this man was talking about. God child? Was he referring to Eryk? She knew that Eryk was not completely human, but she did not think he was a god or the child of one either.

She shook her head.

It didn’t really matter.

This man was her enemy.

“This princess doesn’t know anything about a god child, but she does know you greatly hurt her husband.” Lin slithered forward and glared up at the floating man. “You made him feel incredible pain, hurt him physically and emotionally, and so this princess is going to break your body and make you beg for mercy. She’s gonna smash you flat!”

“Oh? A lamia who has reached the Fourth State of Spiritualism for earth and the Third State for darkness.” The Great Overlord of the Seventh Plain observed Lin with bloody eyes. “You are quite strong for one so young, but you have a long way to go before you can pose a challenge to me. Your predecessor, the first Queen Medusa, had reached the Fourth State of Spiritualism with earth, darkness, and poison, and she had even managed to touch the concept of death. Perhaps if you were as strong as her, I would feel threatened. However, you are just a frog in a well. You look up from the well and think the sky you see is all that exists, but do not worry. I will help you understand just how small you and your friend really are before I kill you.”

“The only one who is going to die is you!” Lin shouted.

She slammed her tail into the ground. The earth bulged like it was a balloon being filled with gas. Several projectiles were spat out of the bulge and shot toward the Great Overlord of the Seventh Plain, but they never reached him. A dark void of swirling energy opened in front of him. The projectiles flew into the void and disappeared.

“You cannot defeat me like that,” he said.

“Then how about like this?” asked Fay as she appeared behind the man in a Flash Step.

Her foot was already ignited with flames as she raised it above her head and prepared to swing it down, but just before she could, her instincts screamed at her. She yelped and back off just as a void opened up where she’d been floating. She skidded backward across the sky and stared in shock at the nebula-like blackness seconds before it vanished.

“You have good instincts,” a voice said behind her. “But instincts are not enough to defeat me.”

Fay did not bother turning around. She shot forward to get away from the person behind her, but something slammed into her back before she could move far. Screams of agony tore from her throat as she felt her spine snap like a brittle twig. The world around her became a blur as the pain caused her vision to fade.

When Fay came to, it was to find herself lying in a crater. She blinked several times. Her entire body hurt. Every centimeter of her was in pain. She would have likened it to being pierced by thousands of spears coated in acid.

It took more effort than it should have, but she managed to summon and pop a Healing Pill into her mouth. She sighed as the healing medicine fixed her internal injuries and clotted her blood. It wasn’t enough, however, and so she popped another Healing Pill into her mouth. This time she felt more of her injuries heal up. Her ruptured lung fixed itself. The broken bones reformed. Even her snapped spinal cord fixed itself with a hissing sound. Steam rose from her body as the clotted injuries sealed up completely, leaving behind health pink skin.

“Oh? So you are still alive?”

Fay turned her head at the voice and discovered, much to her horror, the Great Overlord of the Seventh Plain standing not far enough. It wasn’t his presence that made her feel horror. It was Lin. The lamia’s body had been torn in half. Her snake lower half was lying on the ground, twitching and writhing like it was still alive, while her upper half was lying limp in an expanding pool of blood. The Great Overlord of the Seventh Plain was standing over her.