Life 33 - Chapter 61 - Rocks Fall, Everyone Dies.
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She'd committed the final act of desecration. Sylvis, the green moon, shattered. In Yznarian, the moons weren't just celestial bodies that regulated the tides. They were more than that, vital parts of the world's magical ecosystem. They regulated the ebb and flow of magic, renewing that precious resource and moving it around. As the green moon split into millions of shards and scattered in space, the world wailed in pain.
Creatures depending on the moon's power all around the world cried in agony. Fairies, witches, the Kin, even the women of some species whose menstrual cycle was tied to them. The Broodmother would enter the annals of history as a villain wicked than even Kel'Caldor the lich who stole millions of children to brainwash them into clones of himself.
I too was wracked in immense agony. I struggled and chafed against my magical ward but it was bound to the Broodmother's lifeforce, fueled by the magic of the world. All of our fights back then were to hide her true intentions. She needed only to survive to enact her ritual. In the highest point of the lunar conjunction, she usurped the magic of that blessed moment for her own depraved ends.
But two could play that game. I too activated {Self-Sacrifice} and burned my all. My lifeforce, my HP and Energy, my accumulated Experience, everything fueled a massive spell. My magic circle overlaid itself against hers and our energies clashed.
My spell was one born of oblivion. It would latch itself to the ward preventing me from moving my body and trail the power back to its source, to latch onto the soul of the caster and tear it apart. Without her will to power this ritual, it would be easier to destroy it from within.
A maelstrom of ridiculous proportions formed over the recently-created ocean. The conflicting energies would forever taint this place, waters no sane mariner would dare navigate. Only the eldritch and dangerous monsters would dare live in this place for thousands of years. The Godfall Sea, people would call it.
And yet, as my magic canceled hers, I found the depth of her preparations. I chipped away at the edges of my prison but she had more raw power to offer. She sacrificed a massive dragon body's worth of magic and vitality along with the usurped power of the moon while I only had what I carried with me. Yet the quality of my mana due to my improved Magic Attribute made her spend more than I did. I had a chance.
The backlash struck her like a cosmic baseball bat at the speed of sound. Her bones broke and her limbs warped as scales fell from her crumbling body. We both were done for, but I would be reborn while she had only oblivion ahead of her. My magic latched to her soul and greedily drank of her Divine Spark. She might have destroyed her Core and murdered her believers, thus abandoning her Domain but the Spark remained.
{God-Slayer} triggered and my magic stabbed at that. Her spark was fused to her soul, and a metaphysical spear of conceptual quality struck at it, draining any and all Divinity lingering around it. It drained her spiritual power and added it to my spell. Just like her husband, the layers around that spark that composed her being were peeled away and devoured.
The Spark might be indestructible but the being was not. A "soul" was the "wisp" or "spark" plus the layers of energy that codified everything about the being, memories, feelings, Fate, and purpose. Without that outer shell, the only difference between souls was their nature, whether they were mortal or Divine.
The Broodmother was no more. I got flashes of her memories back on Earth, interviewing US military personnel in a desert somewhere in the Middle East, but that was it. Everything she ever was, was no more. The divine Spark flew off the massive crumbling dragon body and escaped in shame into the great cosmos. Millions of years from now, it would settle in some distant world and spend an eternity gathering enough magic to be reborn as a new deity. I wished it the best of luck. Maybe some of it would rub on me. {Four-Leaf Clover} had burned through one charge to achieve that.
Her spell was on autopilot now. Some fragments of the moon, no longer green, fell on the world. They would be considered both a blessing and a curse by those who found them, for they carried the resentment of a wounded world.
The second part of my sacrificial magic took place, eroding a way out of my predicament. As I studied the ritual around me, I learned its wicked nature. She knew she couldn't erase or kill me but she could seal me. This ritual would place a mighty curse on my soul that would seal my Status the moment I was born, depriving me of my memories and powers. I would live as a mundane mortal over and over, with no knowledge of my former glory. No creature in this world would have enough power to break such a curse and it would kill me the moment someone attempted.
It was a perfect trap, at least conceptually. The Gods wouldn't find me among the seas of people living and dying all over this world, and I would be no more.
Yet it was defective. The Broodmother didn't have enough power to complete the full curse thanks to that stupidly-named {Don't Curse my Homies} Perk Loki gave me. Maybe the Asgardian deity had foreseen this and granted me this layer of protection. That's why she needed to steal the power of the Moon. My own sacrificial magic latched into her framework and allowed me to briefly take control of the haywire magic.
I could do one change. One change I did. Triggering {Self-Sacrifice} again, I threw a hundred Perks away, burning them to power a Fate magic spell. The System fused my remaining Perks and I went about it until I had no Perks that weren't (combined) or (unique). I lost a big deal of power but it would be of no avail to me if I were sealed for good.
The reason for that was that my (combined) and (unique) perks were indelible. Now came the change. Each time I was reborn, I would have access to one of them, chosen randomly. Every time my life or chastity was in danger, I would have another one for a final strike before I died. Once the same combined Perk was granted seven times, it would stick with me forever.
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Eventually, even if it took me hundreds of lives, I would break out of this curse. I had a smidgen of power left and I used it to change the curse to ignore the restriction Wyxnos placed on me on reincarnating as a monster or an animal. Let me get some of those juicy monster Perks too.
With that done, my spell lost all power in the attrition between the conflicting magics and the faulty curse that took place. The next leg of my journey would start anew, back to humble beginnings.
> You died.
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The cataclysm caused by two deities fighting sent the world into a dark age for a hundred years. The silence of the Gods was pronounced with the Matriarch withdrawing from the world. Dragons were diminished and the few survivors, those who didn't believe in their species' patron deity lost their society and withdrew to the far reaches of the world. These young wyrms would know nothing of their forebears' glory, of how the dragons of the earlier ages had customs, gatherings, and a caring Broodmother who looked after them before she went mad with grief and vengeance.
The destruction of the moon changed the skies. A ring of dust and particles formed around the equator, reflecting the sun in the Summer and becoming a dark band that cast a shadow during the day in Winter. It was visible during the day and sometimes during the night when the two other moons came to gaze in shame at their dead sister.
A few debris landed on the planet and the discovery of one of these cursed rocks was always surrounded in strife. The faeries lost most of their power and also withdrew from places closer to civilization, many of them fleeing into pocket dimensions before the cataclysm. Without Sylvis the Green Moon, the world was a more mundane place.
Yet life went on. A century later, the world settled, the storms receded, the earthquakes stopped. The seas became relatively safer to navigate again. But the world lost its innocence, its primordial magic. The churches, one millennium without their deities' guidance, became mired in politics and wicked people took over control, imposing their own secular agenda.
The System changed. The required Exp to level up was lowered and the steep climb to a rank-up softened. Just a little. A thousand years passed and the battle between two deities that destroyed the world's strongest nation became legend.
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Somewhere in the underground, a fairy spawned. She was an old existence so it was more like she had respawned.
She opened her eyes and found herself in a subterranean lake. She blinked her eyes and took in her surroundings with the scant lighting of bioluminescent algae.
"What happened?" She asked herself.
She brought her tiny hand to her chest and pressed it against her skin. Focusing inward, she vainly tried to feel a connection. She felt nothing. The System blared in her ears a fanfare but she ignored it after she checked her Attributes. Nothing wrong there.
"{Guardian's Return}" She chanted and nothing happened. She remained where she was.
Then she felt a tug. No, something happened. But now what she expected. Something was coming. Something friendly, so she waited.
A golden orb plunged into the underground lake, scaring the pale blind fish. If they could see, they would've seen the elegant golden radiance of the orb shed. Gently, it swam across the lake and stopped before the fairy.
The little fae stared at the perfect sphere, as wide as she was tall. She saw her reflection in it, the hues of gold and yellow lighting up the slime-covered rocks she rested on. She felt the pain of loss.
"Pandora, why are you here?" The fairy asked as she wept. Then she asked the true question she wished to know. "Where is she?"
She could feel the [Wisp of Creation] resonated with her grief but it offered her no answer.
Nenandil hugged the divine orb and cried. Without the third piece of their triumvirate, they were incomplete. Yet they weren't alone.
"She's out there, somewhere."
The orb shone just a little brighter.
"We'll find her. No matter how long it takes, we'll find her," Her chin and lips trembled as she sobbed as she vowed. Part of her wished to succumb to despair but she could hope. She had Pandora, the Wisp of Creation, a miracle in itself.
"Will you help me?" She coyly asked.
The wisp sent a surge of power into her. Nenandil felt a bond forming. A sense of longing. A need to aid those who were lost.
"Her people need the Matriarch," Nenandil understood. "I will do as you ask, Pandora. I will stand in her place."
Pandora sealed the bond with the fairy and withdrew inside her soul. Nenandil swam to the edge of the lake and stood on dry rock. She unfurled her wings and waited until they dried enough to fly.
After checking the notifications and lamenting the loss of Attribute points to {Surpasser}, She chose a Class, fused the paths, and allocated her points.
> Level 0
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> Strength*: 170 - Dexterity: 170 - Endurance*: 170
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> Mind*: 170 +12 - Willpower*: 170 +12 - Charisma*: 170 +24
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> Magic*: 170 +24
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> Ego*: 170 +12 - Luck*: 170 +24 - Soul*: 170 +12
>
> HP 36,230
>
> MP 124,035
The surge of power drew the attraction of a monster, an amphibian predator who preferred to stay out of the lake and feed on creatures who came to drink the water. The monster lashed out with a tongue but Nenandil deftly dodged it. Despite being level zero again, she had over two hundred in Dexterity. And most other Attributes as well. She fired an ice shard that brained the monster and leveled up.
"It is so easy at the beginning," she mused as she allocated the points and picked the Perks. After all this time, she had a roadmap to several builds she experimented with. While she didn't retain the Perks from life to life, the Attributes and Proficiencies stayed with her. That didn't change.
Wings dry and resting behind her back, she wove some algae and reeds into crude clothing. She didn't have access to the Item Box anymore and couldn't access her usual outfits. As ready as she would be, Nenandil flew into a tunnel and deep into the bowels of the Labyrinth.
She had a special person to find. A needle in a haystack. No matter how many centuries it took, she would find her and they would be together again and everything would be fine.
As if.
As she thought that, she landed on the rock floor of the cave on her knees. She clutched her stomach and bent over as she wept. Despair wrapped its dark mantle over her and she almost lost it. Her sobs echoed in the tunnels.
Only after she grew tired of crying did she stop. Gasping for breath, she stood and felt a tingle in her hands. Divine power ran in her hand like golden lightning. It sparked between her fingers in tiny crackling arcs.
She wasn't alone. But the longing was too painful. She knew she couldn't give in and give up. All the beautiful things she had witnessed Her do would be wasted if she of all people desisted.
The only way was forward. However painful the lonely road may be.
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THE END. Thanks for reading.
If you are on reader mode, you should check this chapter outside of it.
[https://memegenerator.net/img/instances/74059826/fooled-you.jpg]
MDW:
> Har, har.
>
> We still have sixty-six lives to go but the amnesia arc starts now. You can go hate me in the review section or drop the fiction. If you paid me any money, I'll return it. Otherwise, buckle up and hope for the best.
>
> Maybe I can write a chapter later today, but now I have to go to the mall with my family. Halloween in times of COVID is tough.