2670 No Regret (Part 2)
"Wait, please." Feeling that the tower was killing him faster than the blue flames, M'Rael took out another wooden box from his dimensional amulet and threw it at Lith with the only hand he had left.
He had brought another in case the living legacy proved to be capable of poisoning his mind after a prolonged exposure. It was the ancient technique that the elves had devised to use cursed objects while minimizing the risks of getting used by them.
Lith imprinted the Removal Unit and activated it on the fly. Blue strings of energy captured the stone ring from M'Rael's finger, they sealed it inside the box and then brought it to Lith's hand.
He immediately restored the imprint, feeling his strength and mana being drained by the broken tower faster than even the Abomination Touch of the Void Demon Dragon could restore it.
Yet Solus' light was back, the void in his mind was filled, and he felt whole again. The happiness that was flooding his being was worth all the pain and weakness that were ravaging his body.
"Welcome back, Solus. He said with a huge smile as he gulped nutrients and used his breathing technique just not to collapse. '1 would have never left you with this-Solus?"
There was something wrong with her. Her light was dimmer and her voice was sealed. Lith's joy turned into abject terror, thinking that his attempts to rescue her had inflicted permanent damage upon her.
"Solus, what's wrong? Please, talk to me!" He had no idea that she was just following orders, incapable of moving, acting, and even thinking unless spoken to.
"Please, free me, Lith!" She replied, bawling her mind out as his question temporarily lifted the restrictions on her mind.
'Free from-'Lith's eyes blazed with mana and his whole body twisted in fury the moment his tired brain connected the dots lain by M'Rael's earlier screams. 'You can do whatever you want whenever you want. You are my other half!'
The new orders overrode the old ones, making Solus' light strong and allowing her to share the pain and humiliation she had suffered.
"See? You have her back. There's no need to kill me." M'Rael mistook Lith's outraged silence for calm. "I can help you. I can convince the Parliament to do whatever you want. I can share with you the knowledge of the World Tree."
Through the mind fusion, Lith experienced Solus' agony in becoming just a thing.
Every order she had been forced to follow had defiled her mind and taken away a piece of her. She had hurt Lith against her will and was riddled with guilt for every wound she had inflicted on him.
Her body had been dispelled, her mind trapped, and even her thoughts swatted like an annoying fly.
Even though she knew to be a person, Solus wasn't so sure about it anymore. Everything that she had fought so hard to achieve had been ripped off from her with but a word and it could happen again at any time.
She was terrified of everything and everyone, even of Lith.
"With your Forgemastering arts and all the Yggdrasill wood you need, we can-" An inhuman roar cut off M'Rael's pitch.
All the stone fragments and dust belonging to the tower that had been scattered throughout the Fringe formed a vortex around Lith, seeping inside his body instead of covering it.
Horns burst out of his head, eight wings popped out of his back, and a second jaw appeared right under the first.
His seven eyes rearranged themselves in a circle, making space for two golden ones more. Thick scales covered his body, but this time they were entirely black, their edges white from the heat that burned within his body.
A second set of arms emerged from below his shoulders, the new right hand gripping War's hilt as well. The sudden influx of mana and world energy rejuvenated the shattered blade.
The Adamant shards returned to the blue fire as the fusion between Lith and Solus rebuilt the destroyed branched of War's mana circulatory system with Creation Magic.
"I'm so sorry." The second mouth spoke with a feminine voice as golden tears streamed from two of the nine eyes. "I did this to you. My Fury shattered you. Yet you fought and suffered for me until now."
The tears dripped into the fire while new spikes pierced the second hand as well, adding new blood. The mana crystals on the fuller lit back up one after another, but that was their limit.
Even with the combined power of the fusion and the tower, their Creation Magic could stanch the wound, not treat it.
'I already failed my daughter.'War's thoughts were filled with new vigor and pain. 'I couldn't lose you too, master.'
'I'm not your master!' Solus cried harder, empathizing with the blade's lack of a sense of self.
After what she had gone through, she found the idea of being someone's owner revolting. The feeling of being an expandable tool at the whims of another person still tormented her mind and she couldn't bear the thought of inflicting it upon someone else.
'You are... 'Yet she failed in finding the proper words to express how she felt.
War wasn't truly alive. It had no life force nor soul. Just echoes from Orion's feelings at the moment of its creation and those from Lith's blood during the years the blade had absorbed his mana along with bits of his personality.
The term "friend" seemed too much but calling War a tool was so demeaning that it hurt Solus. In her fury, she plunged the blade inside M'Rael's chest, taking care the hit wouldn't be fatal. War needed to burn mana to prolong its existence but it didn't need to be its own.
The blue flame ravaged the elf's body, consuming his very life essence to fuel the blade's enchantments and keep them stable.
"What the fuck is that thing?' It had taken Ajatar a while to snap out of the shock.
The Solus-Lith thing was still humanoid in appearance, but their aura had gone from plummeting while Lith took on himself Solus' wounds to soaring after their life forces had become one.
Their flaming aura had quickly reached an intensity equivalent to the bright violet level and kept growing stronger by the second. The greyish-black of the tower Voidwalker armor was turning into gold-veined black and white.
To make things even more unsettling, floating above the creature there were two Soul Projections. The Dragon and the golden-scaled being were screaming at each other without saying anything that the human ear could comprehend.
'Long story short, Lith has a tower, Solus is the tower, and sometimes they merge.' Faluel replied.
'They what?' Morok and Ajatar said in unison.
'It's complicated.' Quylla replied. 'It takes more than a second to explain everything. Focus on the battle!'
"Lith, stop it." Quylla's words had reminded her that the situation was far from being solved. "We have to help the others to deal with the elves."
"The elves." The creature's eyes blinked several times as if they had just woken up. "The elves!"
The voices of Lith and Solus sounded like an angry choir as their four arms spread out.
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