A tired mother with white hair on a bed looked at a healthily bawling female baby swaddled in a towel and smiled with a hint of sadness in her gaze.
“My beautiful girl. For your life, which will burn bright with passion but only briefly, as per the language of our ancestors, you will be Ariel.”
She beckoned her spouse who held Ariel closer and gently brought her lips to the baby's forehead. She laid a gentle kiss, then whispered into the baby's ears a short chant in the language of her brethren who had abandoned her, followed by an apology.
“My work is important, and I cannot aid you. So forgive me this foolish mother, my dear, for laying upon you a curse. Because you must grow strong if you wish to subvert your fate, and this curse is the only way I know to help without ruining everything.”
Babies experienced infantile amnesia. This was the inability for human adults to recall experiences before the age of three. Yet, this memory was clear as could be in Ariel's head despite being one made shortly after she was born.
A secondary function of the curse laid upon her prevented her from verbalizing a question about it to the perpetrator, who was never around anyway. But after almost twenty years, she had more or less figured out what the memory meant, allowing her to understand the curse that made her the way she was.
Noah had broken that curse.
Ariel did not lie to him when she told him that they were two peas in a pod, or to herself when she told herself that he could be the one to cure her of her solitude.
However, the real reason she was so assured of the inevitability of their relationship was the breaking of the curse. The curse breaking did not mean that its effects on her personality that had turned her into a training obsessed battle-maniac was gone, only that she was no longer further influenced by it. With the curse gone, she began to seriously ponder on the reason the curse was placed on her in the first place, which was her fate as a ‘brief flame’. As Ariel understood it, she was fated to make big waves, but fall as she achieved success. Or at least, that she was meant to.
“No! I refuse!”
Ariel jumped off her bicorn, her legs propelling the beast into the monster horde right on their tail. For a brief moment, the pursuing mindless monsters in the lead stopped to feed upon the bicorn, and Ariel seized the chance to turn and slash her spear at the air behind her with a maximum aura imbued attack while still in the air.
‘Die!’
A slash of fiery red mana aura at least a diameter of a hundred meters and the same color as her shoulder length ponytail erupted out her spear-tip, and the dozens of monsters that stopped to feast, who she was at least a hundred meters away from now, were bisected in two top and bottom halves before they could swallow the bitten off pieces of the dead bicorn. Many that had not feasted on the bicorn also died as the slash traveled through the horde.
Yet, she had almost a fifth of a million monsters still on her tail. The slash that may have killed a few hundred may as well have been meaningless.
Much like Lucius had, Ariel hit the ground running, and summoned as much mana aura from her spear as she could into her legs, while also pouring mana to boost the physical capabilities of her legs.
‘I can't stop, not even for an instant.’
Surviving in that horde for simply even an instantaneous moment simply was not possible. A pile would form as monsters jumped on each other to try to feast upon the strong and annoying one, and she would be ripped apart instantly before the weight of the pile crushed her.
Her legs screamed, her mana circuits screamed, and she roared.
Mana from the reinforcement poured out of her as it was used up, and her sprint accelerated even further. At this point, she had to have been traveling at a pace of at least a hundred meters per second, yet it was obvious that the monsters were catching up.
A direwolf was first. As it tried to snap at her head, she rapidly swerved away and thrust her spear in its direction as she turned behind and slid away leaving twin trenches half the length of a football field, the beam of aura extending out to burst its head while propelling her backwards.
She used the momentum to continue her sprint, not waiting a moment. As she launched back to the sprint after turning, an Imp was waiting for her, mouth open and prepared to savor her Achilles tendons. She did not even slow down as she stepped on its head, instantly killing it with her speed. Not an instant later though, an amphiptere dive bombed her.
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‘What-!’
Ariel had not seen it coming.
Misdirecting her with an Imp on the ground then actually attacking with a dive-bomb from the sky was a devious tactic, not one that the monsters could have coined.
Ariel had no time to wonder about how it could have been done. The wing of the winged snake twice her size slammed into her from behind, throwing her off balance and adding to her already ridiculous forward speed, sending her rocketing forward at least a kilometer.
With a bloodied face after tumbling and rolling several times, she finally came to an abrupt stop, face-down, as she used her spear to anchor her to the ground. The damage was severe. Several body parts were bruised, and her lungs were punctured.
“Up! Up! Up!”
Yet, her mental spirit was untouched. Yelling at herself through grit teeth, she heaved herself to her feet. She couldn't see the amphiptere that must have been trampled immediately after attacking her. It had likely already been crushed in the stampede of hundreds of thousands. All she could see were the monsters that must have been roughly ten seconds away, rushing towards her undaunted.
Gritting her teeth, Ariel exerted herself.
‘Give me everything. Everything!’
Ariel redirected every ounce of mana. Every shred of aura. All to her upper torso, to her arm, to her wrist. With the time she had, she poured out everything and left nothing behind. A torrent of destructive power rushed into her arm, her spear and a part of her arm now enveloped in a blinding red glow like that of a star. She did not try to control the power, and let it rampage, let it exclaim its presence.
She inhaled.
She exhaled.
She inhaled.
And as she opened her mouth, threw her spear.
What accompanied her deafening roar was every muscle within Ariel’s right arm screaming and shredding itself, while her skin burst. Her spear left her arm that immediately lost its strength and hurtled forward. The spear, almost as if an extension of her very soul, tore through the air, its passage marked by a sound that embodied the final echoes of a warrior refusing to go quietly into the night. The sonic cone from the broken sound barrier was heard by all members of the rescue and assassination unit behind Ariel, and It ruptured the eardrums of many in its fury, not losing out in volume with Ariel's own defiant warcry. The crimson red spear uprooted the ground below its trajectory, leaving a trench in its wake.
What happened next upon contact rivaled a small nuclear warhead.
Instantly, at least ten thousand monsters were eviscerated. A thousand more were critically injured, a crater left behind and a mushroom cloud testament to the destruction she had unleashed upon the earth. The waves of heat rolled across the U-shaped clearing, reminding all of its lingering presence.
But in the end, that was all it was.
A warrior’s final cry.
The extent of her damage was less than a mere tenth of the monsters, and may have bought maybe a couple more seconds for herself, but that was it. Some monsters leaped above the crater and the trench, some flew, some simply chose to sprint through the crater and trenches to get to her.
Not that she could tell. Ariel was on her knees, her eyes blank and head cast downward. A shadow of consciousness was all that was left behind, blood pouring out of her mouth that looked down. The blood fell on her thighs, adding to the blood that poured out of her shriveled up right arm and shoulder.
“glgh…gr”
Her throat and mouth mixed with her blood, while primal and animalistic noises left her throat. She was dying.
The monsters were a mere couple of seconds from her.
Time slowed.
'...girl…life…briefly…Ariel.'
Her life began to flash before her eyes, but not coherently. It was all her fleeting consciousness could manage.
'curse…grow strong…'
That word brought some life back into her starved brain. Some fog cleared away. Not enough to think, but enough for her memories to replay clearly.
One second left.
Her brain fast forwarded past many memories and arrived at another.
"Thor?"
"A thunder god of myth from my homeworld."
Her eyes lit up like two mini suns, and she asked,
"How strong was he?"
"Up there, I think. I mean, thunder and lightning are scary and strong, and stuff. The man got a bunch of movi—plays written about him too."
"Would he be stronger than the six major monarchs?"
"Probably. He's a god, right, so he's gotta be—I feel like we're digressing. Point is, pursue control rather than power. I think your instinct pushes you to use power, so fix that.”
The familiar voice brought some instinct back.
Her head seemed to creak as it slowly tilted backwards, and pointed to the sky.
“Point is, pursue control rather than power.”
A part of the memory replayed.
Time was up. As it resumed, the monsters collapsed upon her with the sound of a discordant, repulsive cacophony of screeches, howls and grunts. However, before her vision was blocked, she felt a familiar gaze from high up in the orange skies, behind the clouds. It felt…reassuring. As if the owner of the gaze had full trust in her capabilities.
“Point is, pursue control rather than power.”
A part of the memory replayed.
A monster pile the size of a bungalow instantly formed, and only rapidly expanded. Many onlookers felt their hearts seem to stop, and for a moment, it felt as if true silence had enveloped the battlefield for the first time as they no longer heard their own heartbeat. Even those that were not familiar with the former Lord’s daughter felt the weight of a powerhouse gone. All were frozen as if they knew not how to react, but this was only temporary. Soon, the action would resume as the saddened human army kicked contingency plans into place.
That is, if nothing happened.
Amidst the pile of monsters that numbered in the thousands and now towered over the rest of the battlefield as if another Maruta Hill was being built, a resplendent red sun shone rays of light through the gaps, despite the layers upon layers of monsters.
And the pile burst apart.