Seven Virtues folded her wings and smiled. The wiggling black tendrils, permeating the cathedral, fighting against her holy radiance, bothered her not. Her golden eyes, in which divine flames danced, stayed fixated on her nemesis.
“Lilith, you shattered my core, ruined my world, and contaminated my Authority,” she said. “You forced me to split my soul into seven. Even after so, so long, I still haven’t reached my former height.
“Your actions, my actions, whenever I close my eyes, they relive themselves through me. I . . . never once forgot, and I . . . have learned a lot, from you, from myself, from this world.”
Seven Virtues pressed her hands together and twisted them. As she drew them from each other, a pearl-like shard manifested between her palms. It hovered motionlessly as if it were an anchor on which the universe hung.
Her Divinity flowed out of her body like a river flowing down a towering mountain. Each stream weaved into a string, which deftly coiled around the crystal shard. They softly lapped against its surface and infused their colour unto it.
“I wouldn’t dare underestimate you, not after what you’ve taught me.” Seven Virtues crossed her arms in front of her chest. “This shard, Eve of the Virtuous, is the result of my studying your Shadow Heart Fragment.”
Lilith tilted her head. Her smile stiffened. “I only lost three Fragments to you people. How could you . . . decipher my secret?”
“I would’ve already annihilated you if I’d deciphered your secret. Eve of the Virtuous could only interfere with your connection to Shadow Heart Core.”
“Marvelous. Although you cannot erase me from existence, you can stop me from resisting, long enough to destroy my vessel.” Lilith raised her hands forwards. “How much does Fate know of your research?”
Seven Virtues removed her hands from her chest and grabbed the holy fragment. Her eyes gleamed. “Not even The Source knows of my achievement.”
Lilith froze before she laughed. The seductiveness in her voice vanished, replaced by surprises and delight.
“We were most alike, my goddess.”
“There exists no likeness between us. Our goals differ violently. All I want is freedom, not for me, but for my people, for those who gift me their trust.”
“Your freedom, achieved through deception and betrayal?”
“For their sake, for our sake.”
Seven Virtues crushed Eve of the Virtuous. The fragment shattered into countless pieces, whose sparkles rose from their surfaces. Illusory wings of light, blazing and flickering, sprouted from their bodies. They forcefully swung, pushing themselves towards Lilith.
These dim and minuscule fireflies faltered as they approached the origin of darkness. They danced against the unrelenting pressure, drifting upstream, to where their destiny lay.
Basking in the pale light, Lilith closed her eyes and curled her wings. Her feathers rained like a downpour during an overcast, dark day. She hung her head down, her eyes staring at her Shadow Heart Core, her vessel, her soul.
A sigh escaped from her pursed lips. Her goddess had, once again, defeated her.
The fireflies touched Lilith’s slime membrane. They lightly pressed against her before merging with her body. Their rapidly darkening radiance, each isolated in their own abyss, fell towards Shadow Heart Core.
The core absorbed them, and Lilith flashed a weary smile. Invisible, indivisible strings connecting Main Material Plane and Shadow Plane stretched, thinned, and snapped broken. Foreign Divinity, filled with infinite Holy Power, rippled across the entire Plane.
Lilith’s connection with Iris’s spiritual body weakened. Her arms no longer responded to her will. Iris’s Corruption Power no longer flowed for her.
She was losing control.
“Was my confidence lovely?” she said.
“I have no interest in your frustration.” Seven Virtues hmphed. “Your Shadow Heart Inheritance, I’ll use it to erase every trace of your existence.”
“So fierce, so determined.”
Iris’s spiritual body collapsed on the ground. Her midnight-black slime dispersed, returning to its usual azure before splattering into a puddle. She rapidly surged back into her frozen physical body.
As Iris regained her clarity. She clenched her stomach and bent down, wincing. Foreign Holy Power seared her body and mind, boiling her slime. Her Corruption Power, now with a hint of blackness, clashed against it and devoured it.
“What . . . happened?” she said. She only remembered a strange, seductive voice echoing in her mind before everything else blurred.
“Tell me, Iris, what is your purpose?” Seven Virtues said.
Iris instinctively looked up. Her eyes no longer teared up upon gazing at The Goddess. Myriad whispers inaudibly lingered in her mind. They murmured great secrets and forbidden knowledge known only to the world, yet she now gained the privilege to touch upon its boundary.
“Everything I do is for myself.” Iris perked up. Her voice sounded unfamiliar to herself. There was within her tone a captivating splendour, one which even the world leaned close to listen, to obey. “I love my family, my friends, my lovers. I desire their happiness, their safety. Would you fault me for my wish?”
Seven Virtues frowned. Her divine presence forced existence itself to change in accordance with her intent. Her voice compelled all mortals to answer with absolute truth and subservience.
How could Iris, a mere Slime Girl, question her back?
“Have you already assimilated a part of Lilith’s inheritance?” she said. “No. I cannot sense any trace of Lilith on you.”
Iris commanded her Shadow Heart Core. Her order traversed into the core and vanished as if devoured by an unending abyss.
She suppressed her panic and sunk into her realm of consciousness. Standing on an infinite land of white fluffy clouds, she called for Duality, who manifested in front of her.
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Though Duality still exuded the same contradictory aura, it was duller than usual, weaker than normal.
“We’ve never forgotten what we promised you, Dear Iris,” Duality said. “Unfortunately, we too are insignificant in front of the highest authority of this world.”
Duality raised her right hand. The black sleeve of her cloak fluttered. Countless invisible chains flickered into existence, their tails shooting towards the firmament, towards the infinite space that existed within Iris’s mindscape.
“These chains restrain us with their Divinity. Our broken self cannot shatter it without suffering grievous injuries.”
“Even if you die, I’ll resurrect you in time.”
“Our allusion is that we’re powerless to guarantee your escape.” Duality grabbed the chains binding her waist and yanked them. “With our power alone, we might all perish here.”
“I won’t allow it.”
Iris and Duality shivered and spun around. The milky clouds rippled throughout the infinite mindscape. Seven Virtues floated above the two, holding a silver rapier, on whose surface engraved countless runes of incomprehensible meanings.
“Duality, how long has it been? You still haven’t found your path.”
Duality furrowed her brows. Both her angelic and demonic auras trembled.
“Our path is the result of our choice. We regret not a single instant of our misery and joy, for we live as slaves to none but ourselves.”
“Then you shall die as yourselves.”
Seven Virtues raised her rapier and flung it. It broke through spacetime, shattering Iris’s mental world, and pierced Duality’s chest. Countless impossible folds in reality converged from all around to twist the rapier’s trajectory, yet it blew through every barrier, even when time itself ceased to move.
Iris clutched her head and grimaced. Her memories, her feelings, and her thoughts thundered in her head. An intense agony assaulted her soul. She wanted to scream, but she couldn’t remember how.
She could only endure while peeking, through her bouts of anguish, at Duality, whose body weakly flailed. The rapier stabbed through her chest and into the ground, handing her body and wings.
Her blood, both black and white at the same time, flowed from her exposed yet beating heart. It traced her slender, devilish figure and formed a puddle beneath her. And out of the puddle symbols emerged, binding Duality’s Divinity and shattered Authority.
“Accept my offer if you wish to save her,” Seven Virtues said. “Become my Blessed, devote your faith to me, and accept my cause, and I’ll make you my Archangel. Under my reign, your family, Pure and Corrupted, will see only bliss.”
Iris took a long, deep breath and struggled to look up. She alternated her reddened gaze between Seven Virtues and Duality. Her promise dictated she helped her partner, but she was utterly powerless in the face of the transcendent.
Before those beyond the limit of the world, speed and power lost their relevance.
“Why would you protect the antithesis of your world?” Iris said.
“My duty is to protect the people of this world, including those tainted by Lilith.” Seven Virtues stepped forward. An invisible staircase led her to stand before Iris. Her golden radiance painted the atmosphere with a hint of dawn. “Your assistance will be integral in our future. The future where we exist in harmony, is it not what you desire?”
“Must you . . . rid us of this power, the power that liberates us?”
“Lilith’s influence distorts all. You, an Otherworlder, know this fact the best.”
“But . . . we’re still ourselves. Our hope and dream, desires and needs, still exist. We . . . merely acquire a new form, a new feeling.”
“Could you trust your own words?”
Iris inhaled. Her hypocrisy troubled her. She knew, better than anyone, that she had changed.
But how much had she changed? She couldn’t know.
Her memory of the olden time flashed before her, her past emotions coursed within her heart, yet she could no longer invoke the same response, hated the same things, rejected the same notions.
Was it time, or was it her new form?
Was she really Iris?
“Those whom I love, what will become of them when they’re no longer who they once were?”
“Are you questioning their affection?”
“No!” Iris shook her head, but she couldn’t calm down. “I’ll love them, always, no matter how they change, or how I change.”
Seven Virtues smiled. She raised her right hand and showed Iris her palm. “Then, allow me to break the shackles placed upon you.”
Iris hesitated for a moment before her eyes brightened, and she reached out for Seven Virtues’s hand. As she grabbed the hand, she closed her eyes and tensed up.
Her realm of consciousness quaked. Its landscape pinkened and lightened. The sea of drifting clouds melted, revealing an endless grassland, where flowers made of candies and bushes made of sugar grew.
A heart-shaped mark manifested on her abdomen and spread its pink lines throughout her body. She shivered, invasive thoughts bubbling in her heart. She clenched her palms and held her voice, yet her cries still reverberated through her gritted teeth.
Seven Virtues chuckled. She pulled Iris into her embrace and hugged her tightly. The lines of love rose from Iris’s membrane. They coiled around Seven Virtues, but they failed to affect her.
Iris’s eyes blurred until their pupils became heart-shaped. She gasped, her sense of self blanked, and Nupian took hold.
Nupian shuddered. The gleams in her eyes dissipated when she recognized the blurry visage of the lady hugging her. Her smile twisted into a scowl as she struggled out of the embrace of her villain.
“Seven Face!” Nupian’s tone lacked the charming quality she always had. “After all these years, I’ve finally met you.”
“Are you hurt that your Iris—”
Nupian raised her right hand and grasped at the air. A banquet of flowers, whose centre was a green rose, manifested in her grip. Atop the rose, an ethereal green eye flashed. It stared at Seven Virtues; its sharp gaze greeted her with an unseen smirk.
Seven Virtues flew backwards. Her wings cloaked her figure, her feathers forming a wall between Nupian and her, obstructing the eye’s line of sight.
“So you’ve received Devoria’s inheritance,” Seven Virtues said. “Was it worth it?”
“There’s no price greater than the day I lost my . . . everything.”
“Fate, a temperamental lady, isn’t she?”
Nupian hmphed. She held her breath and stabbed the rose’s stem through her chest. Its leaves and vines came alive as its roots invaded her body, greedily devouring her Soul Power. Though she deliberately stopped it from consuming Iris, its mere presence disrupted Iris’s Soul Power.
The disintegration speed of the mental world increased.
“Sacrificing yourself just to irritate me?” Seven Virtue said.
She stretched her arms to her side. Vague outlines of seven golden cups manifested around her. Wines of distinct colours overflowed from each cup. They joined into a vortex of fragrance and sweetness and bitterness in the middle.
A massive palm, made of the body of wines, came out of the vortex and moved to crush Nupian. Its monumental size dwarfed her, towering over her as an unscalable mountain.
And she faced it head-on.
The flowers in her chest bloomed; the green rose expanded and shredded its petals. They flew around her, forming a tempest of fragrance which permeated reality now and forever.
Their collective mass overwhelmed the palm, flooded the candy dreamland, and crushed Iris’s mental world. It consumed Seven Virtues and Nupian before imploding unto itself.
In the real world, Seven Virtues rested her right hand on her left. She stroked the back of her left hand, where the lightest blemish tainted her pure, divine beauty.
Around her, illusory scents of wines and ghosts of petals intertwined in rhythms and appearances. Their unreal momentum knocked around pews and chandeliers and carpets and curtains, snuffing out candles and lanterns.
Seven Virtues stood in front of Saintess of Pure Mind. Her aura prevented any harm from befalling her devout believer. After making sure her saintess was safe, she shifted her attention to where Iris was.
Iris’s body had already splattered into a puddle, her Shadow Heart Core missing. Nupian used the last bit of her energy to send Iris into The Void. Because of the chaotic clashes of energy, there was no telling where Iris was, or where she would go.
“A desperate method,” Seven Virtues said. “Unfortunately, you are merely a mortal.”
Seven Virtues twisted her hands. Her seven masks merged into one. Her Authority of Seven Virtues rose out of her forehead. Its infinite radiance illuminated the cathedral, The Void, Main Material Plane, Dreamscape, Abyssal Plane, all things, but only a few who had transcended their mortality could detect it.
“Return to me, Iris,” she said.
The false petals and river of wines froze and then flowed in reverse. They separated from their intertwining state, detached from their coupling, and reformed what they had once destroyed. The ruined cathedral, broken pews, fractured lanterns, they reconstructed themselves as new, untouched.
The puddle of slime bubbled. It rose skywards, assembling into its most beautiful form. Iris emerged with her dull eyes staring into nothingness.
Dim sparks in her eyes flickered, and she regained awareness.
Before she could do anything, Seven Virtues tapped her forehead. An ever-shifting insignia engraved itself into her forehead, into her soul. A rush of Holy Power, of Divinity, flooded her body.