I flew straight from where I was back to the same path I was taking, following the scar that my mother left on the ground, and stopping at the same place where I found my father’s remains. The road that I used to take with Estelle was long gone, consumed by the Corruption, and destroyed by the many fights that took place here when this all started.
As I continued making my way up the mountain, mindless beasts would come out of the ground, swoop in from the sky, and shoot their red, corrupted magic from what they thought was out of my line of sight.
But none of them were going to succeed against me. I could easily swat away the magic that they shot, cut down the ones that tried to attack me, and shoot back at the ones that were in hiding. All of them were nothing more than annoyances in my path, and I wasn’t going to bother destroying them when the most powerful beings in our world had already fallen to me.
All but one.
The large, stormy tornado of the Corrupted Winds that remained in The Dragon’s Pond stood in front of me. I looked up at the wild tower of winds that stretched high into the heavens, and prepared myself for whatever was hiding beyond it by taking a deep breath. After holding it for a few seconds, I let it go, and with a determined look, I stepped into the storm.
The winds battered my body and tried with as much strength as they could muster to either corrupt me or destroy me, but my mother’s power, running through my body, started glowing white from my chest, and the winds were pushed aside, allowing me to easily walk forward.
It was a short distance from the edge of the storm to where the lake used to be, which is where the winds stopped trying to force me away, and the lake finally revealed itself to me.
The sight from my memory was long gone, and the blue waters full of colorful fishes were gone with it. In their place, there was just a deep, red hole, with just one thing inside. However, despite the years I had to prepare myself—imagining and practicing all of the ways I was finally going to deal with this—I never imagined what was going to walk out of this lake.
My eyes widened, and I grinded my teeth in anger.
A beast, not unlike the ones I had faced before, was twining itself up from the bottom of the lake. The back was a bright pink color, full of protruding vertebrae like a spine. On that very same back, I could see the bones of a ribcage of a torso that had a couple of long, thin arms, connected to it.
This torso was long, and the legs at the bottom were just as thin as the rest of the body, which appeared to be covered in a few scales around the top part and the bottom part.
Finally, once it was standing, it turned its head to look this way. It was a head full of blonde hair that covered the face… A face I was dreading to look at, but one that I couldn’t run away from; not anymore.
With a screeching shout, the hair parted, and the face was revealed. It was Estelle’s face, completely decayed and deformed, with hollowed out eyes, sunken cheek, and a mouth that stretched down far beyond the one that any human could possibly do, full of pointy fangs like those of a beast—no, a dragon’s.
I was frozen in place for a moment, seeing the horrific, corrupt being that my sister had been turned into. But I shook away the notion of this being sister when it leaped out of the lake. It was far too large to be my sister, as the length of the body was the same as the dragon’s.
The arms were to the side as it floated out, and the legs were hanging at the bottom, but at the end of the limbs, the hands had been replaced by the short fingers of a dragon’s claw. Seeing all of these things made it certain that this wasn’t my sister… But, how I wished she had remained as dead as my father instead of the monster that she was now.
Though, being the daughter of a Goddess like my mother, it was no wonder that that Evil God would’ve used her to be the first and last being to corrupt our world.
I pulled out my weapon and empowered it with my own magic. It glowed in a mix of dark purple mist and white glow. I was going to end this as soon as possible and take my sister’s power to finally set out to the stars and kill Xarcos.
“Aaaasssssstoooooooooooooorrrrrr…” it said in a deep voice, and I was stunned frozen in place with my eyes widened.
It couldn’t be! She couldn’t possibly still be in there! Not as that monster! But if she was… If she was, then there had to be a way to save her! “Estelle!? Is that you!? What should I—”
“RUUUUUUUN!” she shouted, after which a powerful beam of red, corrupted magic was fired from the mouth.
I lagged in my response due to my surprise, but I still managed to dash away to the side, right before the beam hit me. It exploded into the ground, and red sand spread like a shockwave. I took to the air and flew, going around the edge of the lake and my sister.
“Estelle!” I shouted, still unsure about what was going on here.
“Asstoooorr,” she said once more, and I stopped in the air to listen. “RUN!”
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Another pair of red beams were fired from the hollow darkness of her eyes, and once more, I was forced to dodge away from it, almost being hit as the confusion of this monster filled me. No corrupted monster ever spoke anything other than the Evil God’s name, so I simply didn’t know what to do here.
The beam followed me as my sister’s head continued to turn, trying to catch up with me. Her body also turned unnaturally, making it look like a wringed piece of cloth the more it tried to turn, until eventually, it couldn’t fire its red beam anymore and a couple of thin lines were left in the air, which also quickly disappeared.
“Are you in there, Estelle?!” I shouted, again, unsure of what to do.
No corrupted being had ever been able to be healed, as regardless of what kind of healing magic was used, the Corrupted Winds would eventually take them completely. But if there was a way to do that here… If there was a way to save my sister—maybe with my mother’s power—then I was going to take it, but I just simply didn’t know how I could possibly do such a thing.
Perhaps if I were to mix my most powerful healing spell with my mother’s inherited power? Could it work to save my sister? I’ve never tried anything like that, but…
As I was considering what to do, my sister shifted from her spot in the air at an incredible speed, making it hard for me to follow her movements with my eyes.
“Asssssssssstoooooooooooooooooooooor!” she shouted, and I widened my eyes as I braced for the next move, since her left arm was up in the air. “Run!”
In the blink of an eye, the large arm came down on me; the claws pointed down and coated in the corrupted powers of Xarcos. My instincts reacted even faster than I could think, and I raised my scythe to receive the blow.
A booming explosion followed, where her corrupted power spread all around me, and my White Star power—mixed with the soul power of the weapon—spread all around us. I gritted my teeth and withheld the strength with which my sister just hit me, trying my best to push back the heavy arm.
With a shout and summoning from my chest as much power as I could, I managed to break away from the blow, pushing her hand away, and gaining some distance, which caused my sister to fall to the lake, where her power struck the ground, and a new storm of corruption was formed.
A powerful Corrupted Wind rose up from the lake, obscuring my vision, and making me lose sight of my sister. However, I could still feel her power. She was charging yet another one of those beams, so I flew away as fast as I could, and the red cloud of Corrupted Wind was parted with a beam that shot up to the sky.
I could feel the heat of the beam close to my skin. It might not be able to corrupt me, but it could certainly hurt me, and I wasn’t keen on allowing myself to be hurt that way. I couldn’t stay on the run the whole time. Eventually, my sister was going to be able to land a blow on me, and that would make things difficult.
Once the beam passed, I saw my sister floating inside the drained lake, looking up with her hollow eyes and sunken cheeks at me. Perhaps it would be a good idea to bind her first. With that idea in mind, I shot down from my position, and went straight for her. She readied an arm to swat me away, but I quickly changed directions before I reached her and landed on the ground outside of the lake’s area.
She swiped at the sky, and a wave of corrupted red energy was shot from the claws of her hands. They parted the clouds in the sky, doing nothing; however, she snapped her head in one unnatural movement to look at me with those empty eyes.
“Aaaaaasstooooorrr…” she said, yet again. I was getting tired of her calling my name and just demanding that I— “RUN!”
She leaped out of the lake like a beast, her hands raised in the air and her mouth open wider than before. From the tip of her hands, that same Corrupted Power was charging with its bright red glow; and from the depths of her mouth, I could see the same red power being charged up; all of it aimed at me.
I refused to dodge this time and looked straight at my sister. One step. Two steps… And then, right when she was about to release everything on top of me, I stepped away from her. I had used a difficult technique where my focus would be set only on the moment, and everything around me would seem as if it was moving in slow motion.
With my scythe ready at my side, I floated from my position, and moved to the side of one of my sister’s arms. It was several times larger than me, since this was part of the dragon’s body as well. There were small red scales covering it, and I could see the aura of corruption that emanated from the few bits of bright pink skin that were revealed.
I was going to do something that I might regret in the future, but it was necessary. With my scythe raised, I cut off the limb. Despite being in this slow motion, I could feel the impact of the cut and the resistance of the corrupted body that refused to be damaged. She wouldn’t notice the cut until after the fact, so the cut limb remained in place as if I hadn’t done anything.
Then, I moved on to the next arm, the next leg, and finally, the one remaining leg. Once they were all cleanly cut off, I took my distance, and I released my focus, allowing things to move back at their usual pace.
“AHHHHGHHGHH!” she screamed as her body crashed to the ground, and the limbs violently flew in every direction. I felt that blood curdling scream in my soul, causing me to furrow my eyebrows.
“I’m sorry,” I said, again. “I’ll fix you up once I’m done here, I promise.”
The deformed torso of my sister struggled on the ground as her monstrous voice resonated through the mountain. Her limbs still scratched the ground in desperate moves that tried to find prey or find the body, and from the wildly shaking head, I could see more of those Corrupted Beams being charged. However, since she was fighting so desperately, they were fired in random directions.
This was the opportunity I needed. I closed my eyes and focused on both my mother’s power, and my own magic powers. My magic power turned into healing magic, which I then mixed with my mother’s power as best as I could. This was something I had never dared to try before, but I couldn’t think of anything else. If there was anything that could cleanse the corruption from my sister’s body, it would be the same power that had kept the corruption away from mine, and, hopefully, with my most powerful healing spell, Estelle was going to be saved.
Corrupted Beams continued being fired in wild directions while I casted the healing spell, but it didn’t take more than a dozen seconds for me to finally gather my power, which is when I opened my eyes and saw myself surrounded by an aura of both white light and green light.
This was it. I pointed my hands at my sister, and with one sharp breath, I let it all go, allowing it to wash over her, and causing her to screech once more.