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Wind howled outside of the house and inside Luna's mind. Five days long, the tremor rose to the point even her physical ears didn't hear properly. The wailing had no origin, like a remembered sound doesn't make one turn to face it. By now, a mild nuisance had become relentless pain.
There was no physical injury, it was all in her mind. Not that knowing this made the slightest bit of difference, because regardless of the source all pain only exists within one's mind. The only difference was that with an injury or an infection, the nervous system provided a handy little package of extra information : the shape, the location, maybe even a direction. This pain had nothing of the sort. She couldn't flee from anything, there was nothing to heal or cut off.
The longer it went on, the worse her control over her own body became. All of today and most of yesterday was spent lying down, useless.
Lyos was affected just as much, but since he didn't see the astral plane he wasn't aware anything was wrong even as he concentration slipped. By high and low, he claimed not to suffer any pain, because hey, he had learned all life that pain was only this specific thing caused by injuries or emotions, which had shapes and external sources. Only yesterday he had started hearing a shrill thrill, and it wasn't until this morning he was willing to admit something was wrong.
The little brat didn't do so verbally, he just staggered into her hut complaining of headache and collapsing. Now he lay on a mat next to her because it had gotten so bad he couldn't leave.
Headache. What a weak word to describe this. Or perhaps that's all he felt? Maybe he was weaker, or just less affected by the astral side. Whatever, Luna didn't have the space left in her mind to figure it out. She'd never fully understood what it meant to be victim of astral pain; inflicting it on others and tasting their miasma was not on par with actually feeling it.
Days slipped by, the cycle of the sun didn't mean anything. Hunger was gone, but she ate when someone shoved food in her hands. Humans had to, so did she.
The presence of thirst tipped her off something wasn't quite right. Her body craved water, but all else she gained energy from became supplemental. Without sleep she couldn't even try to visit Filia (she'd almost gotten through whatever blocked her, dammit) and ask for any arcane ancient magic stuff that might explain this.
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The wailing took a sprint to the peak somewhere on the sixth day, like a rising tidal wave. The villagers were just getting ready to work when the shockwave hit. To them it did nothing, they didn't even notice it. To Luna, the pain finally had a form : he skin ripped off her muscles, doubly so. Both her physical and astral body were assaulted by an overload of pull.
It demanded her to come. She was but a small piece of a greater whole ... had to be united and flow together, could leave behind those thoughts ...
Like having two wills in one form, she was here, yet the other will was hers too. It really, really wanted to follow that pull. Her astral form, Siephied's corpse, constructing some instinct that translated to her human mind as a need to follow.
Whole. Everything about the pull promised wholeness.
She believed it to be right for the seconds it took her to realize it meant her death.
If her resonance with Lyos's power had just spooked her, this felt like being cornered. Vrabazard, Rangort, Valwin so close by, Lyos even closer, Ragradia's power in the Kataart Mountains, the Eternal Queen not too far from there, and someone else her mind had no name for, but closest to her resonance.
The crack of her skull against the ground was laughably negligible amidst all that.
On the astral plane, the ribcage moved in synchrony with her own chest. The tendrils on the back writhed towards Lyos and the sea. Luna desperately wished she had eyes to close, but instead she saw double. Once with her own eyes, seeing both worlds, and the other was on the astral plane alone ... no ... no, now it saw the physical world too. Siephied's power seeped deeper into her soul, like water into a sponge. How could it be when at the same time it felt like her power was being ripped away?
Beside her, Lyos stood up. Eyes wide, he staggered out of the door. Luna pulled herself together, sent signals to her legs even if they didn't feel like they were part of her body anymore.
Lyos was only two steps outside when she grabbed his cloak.
"No, we're human," Luna snarled. "We can't go there."
She snarled. Not merely the way one speaks though clenched teeth, but genuinely adding a rubble ... not inside her own body. The ribcage around her vibrated with sound on each word she spoke. Shocked, Luna let go.
Lyos ran to the sea, or rather ... to the pillar that rose from beyond the horizon. It was needle thin but as bright as the sun.
Luna took a step closer, then another, following Lyos without clearly know what she wanted.
Cold hands on her shoulder pulled her back. It wasn't so much physical power as astral dominance that held Luna in place. Orun's soul brimmed with holy power, but not the type that was godly enough to be pulled in. It gave Luna a little stability.
"What's happening?" Luna blurted out. The shriek that her astral form added almost drowned her human voice. Orun cringed but didn't let go of her shoulders.
"It's a ..." Her fingers dug deeper. "Stay yourself. Just focus."
"What is happening?"
Orun didn't answer, but her conflicted feelings betrayed her. She knew exactly what was happening.
Before Luna decided whether she wanted to hurt her till she talked, that hellish pillar reached its peak far above the clouds. There it broken into threads, three of which came this way, intensifying the pull the closer they got.
Luna shook Orun off and had to run towards it, along with the flow. Every other direction caused pain.
"Dilgear, stop her!" Orun screamed.
"But I'm not supposed to touch her without permission!"
"Keep her here!"
That just wouldn't do, being talked about like some hapless child about to run into danger. Her brain needled, just a little further, go go go, but she had to stop. At the village's edge, she threw an arm around a tree, abruptly cutting off her momentum. Heavily breathing, she clutched her wrist with her other hand. Not that she needed it anymore, but the feeling of holding on was something she needed.
Wait ... the damn tree was magically enforced.
It was all around the village, in fact, a ring of trees in a circle. She saw it, she felt it.
A scathing little laugh escaped her. All this time, she'd been inside a seal.
Her astral body janked at her to get closer to the approaching ray, but she force herself to look back through the houses.
Orun was still visible partially. She drew a five pointed seal around her, using a staff Luna didn't remember her holding before; she must have had a subspace with her.
The trees, the circle, the staff, Orun knowing how to hold her back, it was all magic she hadn't suspected from this place.
Was that a demon seal Orun drew? It looked like it had only five points ...
Spot shot out of the village, blocking her view. He held out a claw, a pleading look in his eyes. "Let me carry you back, Orun says she can help."
Any thought of response drowned in the fact that something poured into her. Poison and medicine at the same time, bitter and disgusting yet sickeningly sweet. It flowed towards her straight out of the confines of his soul. Dripping in, she started to find similarity with ... feelings ... worry. The taste of emotions was familiar ...
Oh hell no.
She was eating emotional miasma as if she were an astral resident. Without a filter, the poison of his fearful worry mingled with his pathetic sense of love.
"Get away from me," she muttered. This time, her astral body roared so loud that Spot's ears flattened. She knew he couldn't have heard her over that, but she lashed out anyway. One round kick to his stomach later, he fell back and Luna was running again.
Confused by the double vision, she fell and tripped as she avoided branches that would never hit her small human form. She knew she had to stop, but her want was replaced by that primitive sense of belonging.
When she arrived on shore, she was just in time to see the last of Lyos disappeared into the ocean. He was submerged, but the water still splashed in response to his power. The first ray hit him, and he stopped.
Another ray had already halted above the sea, forming a bright white star where Luna felt the Tower of Wind to be.
That was all she could see before the last one hit her dead on.
Only when her soul started tearing from her body did she realize what it was like : Megiddo's pull.
Three years ago, she had died in the heart of Zephyria. Then it was her human soul summoned, a painless yet demanding pull.
Right here and now, it was Siephied's fragment being drawn while her human soul's remained anchored in her body.
Rage and other distorting emotions could bind one to this world by breaking the flow, Filia had taught her the barest minimal of spirit wandering back then. She clung to her rage and form and remained. As she clawed into herself to find hold, she found something stronger than mere emotions.
Something on her astral body turned, the second vision focused on the metal around her neck. A power was embedded deep within the demon magic, with only narrow channels to lead in holiness. The moment she became aware of it, her astral body saw a sliver of red on both planes, yet it was neither.
All her will clutched to this sliver and yet the only it did was allow herself to stay here. Her physical body had collapsed in the white sand, thrashing. Now she could hold still, even if not get up. She needed all her attention to keep herself in one piece.
For all she resented Zelas, she clutched her hands around her neck, drawing on the darkness within it to wash away the blinding light. Haircracks appeared in the flow and she could think a little more clearly. This formed a whole new weakness : just as she was aware of the gods, they were aware of her. Valwin realized she had an anchor, and she now had its attention.
Panic and desperation seeped into her mind, along with the thoughts of a god who didn't want to cease anymore than she did. The Tower of Wind had broken, Valwin came for her. Even with his failing speed, even if she'd been able to stand, there was nowhere to run. The astral plane was barren for a god, she could not hide.
There were about five or four crevices left in her mind where she could still think more than oh god my soul is fragmenting Valwin is going to destroy me help. These parts parts were seriously considering angst, save for the seething rage about ... pretty much everything. The last crevice belatedly informed her that rage wasn't just hers. From the direction of the sea, a rotten miasma rolled up the land, followed by a streak of silver, beige and white exploding from the ocean. Complimentary devil's darkness on the astral plane.
Zelas towered over Luna for a second, long enough for Luna to see a struggling Lyos in one of her left claw. The next second Luna was in the right claw.
The flow distorted sickly as Zelas warped space around them for a few seconds before the two were thrown onto sand. Luna actually felt the environment now, if only because Zelas's aura interfered with the flow.
They were back in the middle of the village, where everyone had gathered in the center. No one seemed surprised by the giant devil.
Astrally, Zelas kept her claws on the two, but her projection changed to the human form that matched the humans here most closely.
While Spot fussed over Luna, Orun stepped to Zelas without half as much fear as she ought to have. The summoning circle at her feet still glowed with power remnants.
Orun was about to speak when Zelas pushed a bizarre clay construct into her hands. The object was like something Filia would create if she stopped caring for stuff like purpose, which meant only one thing : a fusion magic vessel.
With half a turn, Zelas faced her ... or rather, Spot. She pushed the complimentary vessel, an abomination of symmetry and good taste, into his hands. A mad little chuckle escaped Luna through the agony of her soul ripping apart. Him?
"Orun knows about shields. If you want your mistress safe, will out the darkness of that vessel and let her steer it in tandem. Both of you want her safe, do you not?"
Spot, who had never in his life had used magic or even done much useful, summoned a pitch black blob that mingled with Orun's white magic. And voila, magic shield, just like that.
The moment it encased the small group, the pull disappeared completely. Zelas let them go and Luna forced herself up despite the complaints of her muscles. No second too long in that disgraceful state.
"Luna, are you better now?" Spot asked.
"No, Spot. Look at me spasming in the dirt," she said, point where she's laid before.
That's when she noticed Lyos. He was in the middle of shrinking down from a hulk version of himself to the usual guy. Even as he returned to normal, a frantic aura remained around him. His lips were streaked with blood, when he spoke she still saw fangs.
This had to be the transformation he'd undergone when Huraker had controlled him. The bits and pieces Luna had heard didn't describe this ... had she herself undergone this? A quick check over her own clothes indicated the contrary, though. Luna wasn't sure what to think of that.
"What the hell?" Lyos said.
"Hell indeed," Zelas said loosely, but Luna could taste the sickening miasma of anger and anxiety. "As you may have noticed, my plans has been invaded."
"Yeah, I figured out! It's about ... I thought I conquered the sanity slippage! I wasn't supposed to lose it!"
"You did retain some control," Zelas said coldly. "You would have attacked me otherwise. What is happening here is well beyond miss Lina summoning some borrowed power. Deep Sea Dolphin took over my much more potent project and she has no idea what she is doing. Unlike us."
With a smug little smile, Zelas peered up at the shield. Hmm.
Luna turned to Spot, who cringed as he should. "Spot. Does us include you?"
"Ehm ... well ... I don't know what they're doing, but Orun said it would be a great surprise for you if I learned magic and I guess its-helping-now-I'm-not-betrayingyoupleasedon'tI'msorryIjustwantedtohelp."
She cut at him across the astral plane, or at least tried to. Zelas was in the way.
Spot actually liked Orun enough to listen to that nonsense, apparently. He wasn't the kind to go around and make friends ... unless off course Orun had really bothered. She might have, if she was expecting to be using fusion magic at one point. It wouldn't surprise Luna the least if Zelas had given her the method of approach.
"You were in on this all," Luna said with deadly calmness, without facing anyone. "So, what exactly is all?"
Orun felt the sharp edge Luna thrust out on the astral plane and took a fearful step away, but didn't speak.
Luna had every intention of forcing her to talk, but at this point the temple meant to transport people to the Tower of Wind deemed it fit to explode like a volcano.
Instead of heat, freezing wind burst forth. The sky brightened eerily, clouds drawing together in icy white and lightning. Emerging for the core of the holy tower was a long dragon, tremendous but without the detail Luna had seen in Filia's dreams. Absurdly enough, it had more of a generic serpentine dragon, silver and with a burst of energy across its back.
"Spread that shield. Mister Lyos, employ your magic to draw water from the air and ground to create fog," Zelas ordered quietly. "Valwin is projecting into the physical realm because e realized e is blocked, so e is looking for the anchor it sensed before."
Zelas grabbed Orun and Dilgaer by the shoulder and pushed them to the ground. She grew her white wings and spread them over the small group. "Expand it over the village."
Orun and Spot did so; Luna still couldn't believe that damn hybrid could work so efficiently with magic. He must have been training when she slept or something, and she hadn't even noticed!
Lyos didn't even need to use his sword to control the water now. The pull had changed something about his astral awareness; Luna idly wondered whether anything had changed about herself.
Above, the god coiled like a snake trying to escape the beast that bit its tail, breathing up whirling winds almost as an afterthought. Trees flattered, houses broke apart and Lyos almost lost the fog. Valwin should have noticed that fog made no sense, but that was the problem, wasn't it? Valwin couldn't think sensically anymore. If the pain of the pull was proportional to how much power one had, then Valwin was going through the worst of it.
That fusion magic shield did nothing to block miasma. Tasting misery was obnoxious, but in the past she just option to let miasma slide. She had needed conscious effort to even hold onto it. Now, it poured into her against will or want. Every bit of Valwin's pain ...
Luna never cried. Sometimes her tear ducts played up. That never mattered because it was one of many reasons having low bangs worked for her. She didn't feel sad, there were just involuntary reactions of her body. It was just ... everything the god felt copied into her physical body. Luna stood still because she didn't want to be seen collapsing again, but on the astral plane she couldn't help but lash out with limbs she had never been able to control.
Valwin's form shifted like driven clouds, expanding of fading with every new movement, reforming in others. Someone could have overlain the motion of an animal onto an illusion of clouds and this would have been it in its poorest form. Valwin's cry held nothing organic, it was the crack of lightning strikes, of bones breaking, of thunder rolling.
He wasn't watching anymore. The houses didn't last, causing pieces of debris to fly around. Lyos conjured a frozen shield for himself, Luna and those nearest, but he had a limited range.
Fearful humans struggled to get below Zelas's expanding wings, those who didn't make it were throw to the ground. Some died when wood or stone hit them. Undeterred by the pull, the true Megiddo called them to the other world, blue pillars only visible on the astral plane. For Lyos, it was the death of friends, so he added his own pain to Valwin's little banquet. The same he unwittingly ate from.
Luna almost enjoyed it, this toxic mixture of love and fear.
"What's he doing?" Lyos asked.
"E knows intellectually that merging with the other gods isn't meant to happen, so e clings to the here and now, even as the pull compels hir to," Zelas said, somehow audible even over the wind. "Let us say the gods have very little practice with denying the flow and their matching instinct."
The temple tower finally broke, unable to withstand a god's uncontrolled power. Like a long held breath, Valwin let go. It took along the light, leaving a suffocation hollow behind. Silence and a village covered in white dust lay at its center. Corpses scattered across the street where Valwin's power had not touched enough to burn them away.
Zelas's projection was only partially complete : her wings covered the village for a degree, but her claws and head were ghostly translucent. Central to those who had found refuge under them were Orun and Spot, still sourcing their shield.
As the other survivors realized they were safe, gratitude welled up. Zelas leaned her massive head, twisting it at an angle so her right eye — the less eerie one — looked down on the humans with an amusement said humans did not see. Zelas hadn't done it to protect them, only her investment.
"Lord Zelas, thank you," Orun said, bowed. "We wouldn't have survived without your protection."
"You are welcome," Zelas in an utmost formal tone, without caring at all. She shrunk down to her travel projection. "Miss Orun, please rise. I hate to have a conversation where I cannot see one's eyes."
On that last word, her astral body cast a condescending glance at Luna.
With no more than a shrug, Luna said, "You're gonna have to do so anyway, cause you owe me answers and I'm not getting a haircut."
"Alas, my contract with miss Orun is of a more savory nature and has precedence over you," Zelas's human form said.
"Gonna try to run me around the mill? Maybe I should ask my siblings once that thing is off. So much fun things to tell them," Luna held up a hand, back of the palm to Zelas and all fingers extended. "One. Megiddo imitation that pulls in godly particles. Two. Your clown shows some mighty flaws. Three. Rangort. Four. Orun knew to summon you and Lyos also knows you. Five. Philosopher's stone in my chain. Could go on."
"Well then. Telling them will cause them great panic and you will get their full attention. You did not seem to like this idea just before. I may tell you this much : you are a brewing station, Lady Corpse. Now, miss Orun ..."
As if she were a place and no person. Anyone else would've been subject to an astral cut right about now, but Luna wasn't foolish enough to try that on someone as dangerous as Zelas. She repeated this to herself a few times.
Luna wasn't used to interacting with insolent stronger beings. Her astral form responded to her will first and foremost, usually rational thoughts like "if I lash out, my victim might just hurt me in return" didn't need to hold weight.
It absolutely did now.
Zelas and Orun rattled on about pieces of a puzzle beyond Luna's grasp. She needed all her concentration to not demand attention, or make any of the noisy villagers shut up, or get Zelas to stop treating her like a random bystander.
It was evident that the entire village were in league with Zelas. Dates were vague, but at some point Orun had vowed relative loyalty to Zelas in exchange for protection; there was talk that now the rays had pointed out both Luna and Lyos, this wouldn't hold. There would at least be scouts soon. Zelas couldn't be seen by them and intended to bail. She gave Orun a few suggestions on staying alive, feigning a credible balance between detached interest and actual care. Just business.
This was how normal humans had to live, always looking onto the mighty and feeling how powerless they were. No news to Luna, she'd seen it in those around her. In Lina. Now, she felt it herself.
Lyos came over to her side; though he didn't touch her it felt weirdly like he was pushing against her.
"Calm down, Luna," he whispered.
"I haven't even moved on both planes. Yes, pure rage. Calming down will commence by reducing zero activity to a negative five. That okay?"
"Don't play innocent. People always get hurt once you brace yourself."
"I'd be less on high alert if I'd know what was going on. Tell me." It didn't make much sense to expect him to tell her, but even now, he felt like kin. Damn godly resonance.
"If you know what we are doing, you'll do something problematic in response," Lyos said. "You're not meant to be in harm's way, but it's going to really look like you are. Even if you'd believe Zelas won't do it, you could assume someone else might. Especially now she lost control."
Luna knocked on his head. "You could be lying. It already looks like I am in harms way. Or perhaps you're afraid I'll mess up whatever you're brewing?"
Without warning, humanoid Zelas stood before Luna and tore apart the transformative magic to reveal the chain on her neck. She janked it with scathing laughter. "For all your power, you can't break through my seal. Why would we fear that?"
Involuntarily, Luna closed her hands around shackles. Zelas pulled again, forcing Luna to take a step closer. The thick scent of an angered devil filled the atmosphere and the villagers increased their distance.
"Stop it. I'm not your dog!"
"I never said so," Zelas drawled as she wound the chain around her hand. "You are a fragile mind etched on a soul bloated and bleeding with godliness in a world where heaven is a lie."
Luna let her hands drop. "Did you get that one from a modern theater?"
A most unpleasant little smile appeared on Zelas's face. "I merely comment on what I see."
She stretched a long arm to the left. Luna couldn't immediately place the red vine thing she tapped with her long nails, not until she felt it with delay.
It was her own. She spun her head around.
Growing from her own back, out of the corpse's spine, was a network of red branching nerves materialized. Some were thick as an arm, others thin as thread. They all ended in the open, splattering droplets of blood over the environment. Every few seconds, a new nerve shot out. Not only that, but new muscles were growing across the skeleton. As she realized this, she started to feel it.
Luna clenched her teeth and slightly curled her fingers. The last time she had needed to resort to mental tricks to push away panic was at age six. She hated she needed it now, but she hated losing control in front of Zelas more. The bitch looked like she was having a feast, even as the human projection kept the obnoxious above-it-all look.
"How do I shut it down?"
"Perhaps you mean retract. No machine here, it is your own thoughts. Simply cease them. Oh, I remember. You have a subconscious entirely out of your control. Human."
"You planted the idea, I can't unhear it."
Zelas shook her head. "Oh, no, not at all. It's all you. You want to rid of your power so gladly simple words make it happen, yet you are afraid of losing it. Such a contradiction."
"That's not a contradiction and I'm not losing Siephied, just energy," Luna snapped. "As long as I am called Luna Inverse, knight of Siephied, I'll be a target for devils. Better to have much of it. It's the lack of afterlife that bothers me, you know ... that."
Off course she knew. Luna should have realized she was being played again.
"Well then, the circle is round, lady human. Let me give you a reason to stop bleeding yourself : if you leak any of what you learned today into the minds of Valwin or Vrabazard once that pillar is off, they will come for you and tear your mind apart. Pray to yourself that I'll arrive first to send you hellward, because Rangort will be there waiting. Those dragons who saw little Val, whom Xelloss killed? Rangort tore their minds apart because it was more convenient than anything else."
That did the trick, and it also did something else. Under the venom of the wolf's words, Luna detected something weak.
Fear. Fear of the exact same thing Luna wanted to run from. The worst of losing yourself isn't the actual loss, it's feeling yourself break away. Zelas was afraid of her own fate with the same creeping mixture of self doubt and anxiety, like a stalked animal might fear their own noise and scent would betray them.
For Luna the greatest fear wasn't merely to cease, it was the imperfect nothing. A little bit of awareness left of herself within whatever she became, a last remnant that was still there to resent and suffer her fate. Zelas felt so similar as she spoke of this, it had to be the same.
"What are you grinning about?" Zelas asked.
"Nothing. The nothing we're afraid of." These words dragged up what Luna had guessed at. Just a little more fuel ... "At least, I know how to plug any holes in my soul before I drain empty. You can't even cast magic without dying."
Zelas just raised an eyebrow and quelled her own sting of latent fear. "Hmm."
Oh well. This was good enough for today. For another day would be a method to use this against Zelas.
With a little magic, Zelas commanded the chain back into the necklace form Orun had crafted, as if to rub it in that it didn't matter she couldn't cast when she was made of magic.
"I have one more question, if I may," Orun said. That was enough to make Zelas ignore Luna again. "If the pull can cause it to go awry like with Lyos and Luna, does this mean Airlord Valwin will remain like this? If he cannot balance himself or feed, will he recover? He has no anchor like the Knights or Sages."
Zelas growled, "How am I to know? Such a thing never happened before."
"How can you not understand your own plan?" Spot asked, an outburst Luna would have punished him for. Zelas didn't even care.
"I didn't form this particular part of the plan myself."
Oh. That meant it involved something not of her own magic, either a spell or a construction. On top of that, what did they want with Valwin? Was he meant to change into something, or was he meant to be subdued?
"I shall depart now. Miss Orun, mister Dilgear, will you make a hole in this shield?"
Orun nodded and conjured a small hole. For the second Zelas needed to slip out, the pull returned to Luna and Lyos, but it was so short they had no time to be tempted by it.
Outside, Zelas said, "Do stay in here until the pillar disappears, then move and don't look back."
When Zelas was gone, Orun ordered her people to salvage what they could and burn the dead. After that, they would follow the directions Zelas had given. There were certain magical caves to the south-west they could hide in, at least for a while.
The villagers scattered in silence and Lyos gave them guidance in a quiet voice. Their town was in ruins, the ground littered with corpses and the ash suffocated them all. Nobody spoke, as if they'd expected and resigned that this was the outcome of this pact.
In between comforting villagers, Orun used her time to coax Spot on better control over magic, which confirmed Luna's suspicions. It sounded like a continued lesson. All this time, she'd been mentoring Luna's dog without permission.
People kept flocking around, needing comfort and hope in the form of words. To Luna, things like that meant nothing. She had no emotional need for people ...
...
... neither had Valwin. Never before had a complete god been so close, she hadn't realized just how featureless their minds were. No emotional needs.
Luna pulled up her legs and almost put her arms around them, but stopped herself before showing such an obvious weakness. Comforting oneself was form of lying, she needed the real thing and that was that was who she was. Whole still, she'd make it through this. There were few devils who could kill her and she could will this errant form of projection into her control. The red web had stopped growing, she closed her physical eyes and little by little draw it back into herself. Siephied's corpse didn't withdraw, but she could deal with that.
Luna had seen the corpse all her life, but hadn't realized until she was five what she was seeing. Her parents usually ushered her away from gore, but that day they'd been distracted. It had been just a bit of roadkill at the side that was squashed on the lower end, the skin torn off on the upper body. That's when she realized that the weird red thing around her was like a dead thing.
It hadn't shocked her, but as time went on and she smelled more deceased bodies, the scent was associated in her mind with the decay around her. The slight stench never really went away, even when distractions didn't leave room to think about it.
So she had owned it. Luna had needed a good three years to get over the obnoxious idea she was filthy, mostly by playing with the idea she was the god of this world and nobody could make her do anything she didn't want. That was worth a slight sensory discomfort. She was fine now, but then Zelas had to march into her life, throw her around like a rag doll and be so gorgeous on both planes. Shabranigdu himself was somehow flawed in his purpose, if he had a daughter like that. Or maybe, that was all part of her cheating on the natural order.
The last of the strange growths had drawn back into her, only for something else to shape in her astral side. But Luna decided it didn't matter. If Zelas could get away with cheating on all comatose Shabranigdu had intended, Luna had as much to say about her tie with dead Siephied.
She needed a plan to make sure she stayed the way she was. Zelas and her cronies couldn't be trusted, and Lyos least of all. Off course he would believe what he had said. He was a nitwit, it wouldn't be the first time a devil deity had wound him around his finger.
Luna would have bailed already if not for the rainforest. She didn't know the way, nor did she know how to safely feed on anything in it. For now, she needed to stay with these people, at least until they were into a more habitable area. Possibly she went on her own pressuring people into helping her, she would stand out. If the devils expected her to be here, they would send worse enemies. But if she stayed near Lyos, she might be herself some time. Devils couldn't see very far on the astral plane, as long as she killed anything that got too near she could remain hidden under Lyos's shadow.
There was the problem these people worked for Zelas, though. Everything that had happened, bringing her here, getting her engaged with the local magic, teaching her about the flow, it was to create this philosopher's stone in her chain. That was assuming she had it pegged right. Between talismen and philosopher's stones, were there any other purposes for this red stuff?
Now if only she had a library with vast knowledge, or someone who had studied under a great sage, or someone who knew how to tinker with magic. Hmm ... getting in touch with Filia would have to take precedence. Luna set her mind to evolving her astral form in a way that allowed her to dreamwalk from any location, not just holy ones.
For the first time in her life, Luna actually felt like getting her spiritual affairs in order. When the pillar of light disappeared a few hours later, she'd be ready to ride the flow across the world ...
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A vague trance later, Luna had reached the profound realization that a chosen profession of waitress was a really stupid, arrogant choice. She could have spent that time actually learning about magic and spirituality. They'd bloody well pay her if she just provided some holy magic to do spells with. Her little exploration had only stuffed her memory with random images from nearby temples. With no progress in reaching Filia, she stepped out of her trance and into ... oh, look, war.
The sun was setting, someone had the guts to strap Luna on the back of a luggage bird and devils were flocking out of the shadowy treeline. Lyos was making short work of them while Orun had a holy shield going. No sign of the fusion magic vessels. Maybe they were broken.
Stiffly, Luna sat up and refocused. Trance went at the cost of even her astral awareness of the surrounding, she had only limited space in her mind. How embarrassing when there were devils to be killed. Ah well, it was only small fry. Nothing to be impressed by when she had just seen a god knock down a landscape by simply breathing on it.
Nevertheless, she knew to be cautious. The exhaustion tactic had been tried on her during the war around Luke Shabranigdu. Good thing they weren't expecting her this time. From the luggage she lay on, she claimed a kitchen knife in name of good old times. With a simple flick, she jumped into the fray and let them figure out what they were dealing with slowly.
"You're going to get us with a little kitchen knife, girl?" some random devil with typically shadowy look said.
Using the knife as anchor, she pulsed all of Siephied's power out, leaving her body and brain unmarred. Her exploration wasn't entirely without fruit. She looked down deep into the knife's structure. The tiny particles that made it up, the wood of the handle, the remnants of acid of the tree long gone. The power of growth, hidden there in invisible detail. She embedded it all with magic and bound it as a whole and voila, she held a sword. If she could project flesh, she could project metal.
On the astral plane, hell flared up again. Her dragon form's ribs folded open, the edges manifested in the physical form as a ghostly shield. Four tentacles unfolded, hers to control now. She set them alight with white fire, forcing them forward so quickly the devil had no chance to retreat. It got pierced, the miasma of its death throes pouring into Luna's mind. It tasted foul, but it was good to know its death was so miserable. She might just acquire a taste for this.
She killed another weakling, more slowly.
There was no Siephied, only Luna, a corpse of a god with a human mind. Zelas could rant all she wanted about fragility and bleeding, Luna turned it to her strength.
She killed the nearest five in the same way, and plucked two more off of Spot.
"Here I am, devils!" she called when she found herself without enemies left. "I tried staying out of your business, but you never ceased getting into mine! Here I am, out of my house and into your war. You'll regret inviting me." Quite cheesy, but devils rarely resisted a good taunt.
"Luna, none of these guys messed with you before," Spot muttered.
"Hush, I'm being awesome," Luna said. "They don't need to know the details."
Out of the rainforest, a new wave broke forth. The idiots still didn't realize what their enemy was, the stronger ones still focused on Lyos.
She forced more solidity in the skeletal projections that hovered around her, but it never became anything logical. It didn't need to be. She laughed with a human face and a dragon's skull as she surrendered to harvesting pain.
A human skull emerged atop the skull, a third face for herself. The bronze haze of the astral plane burned away in her brightness, and the poisonous miasma didn't matter because she decided to like it.
Ah, no, don't forget strategy. She could tire ... she looked for Lyos ...
They were little pieces of mortals, dancing through the devils for murder on the strings of dead gods. Puppets who become the master.
Luna noticed the blood only now.
She brought her hands to her mouth, first feeling the blood and the raw flesh of her cut lip. She pushed her fingers a little deeper. There were fangs, just like Lyos.
Luna took a deep breath, decided to figure out how to eat with that later and lived on.
There he was, the other one. Lyos was mowing through the devils like pinpricks. Precise, sure, but not very useful as a more broad tactic. He only knew how to fight solo.
She jumped to her side, wiped out some nuisances and crossed her arms before him, leaving no room to the sides.
"Spiky. Calm down. Roaring rampages of revenge are so trite, especially when we kill so much more by concentrating," she stated evenly. It was satisfying throwing his words back at him, and pop went the head of the devil that launched at her.
"I am calm!"
"You always overexert yourself when you're angry," Luna said. "Go do it in a more productive way. Herd this lot to me. I will kill them all while you get to be productive. Also, I want a smoke screen. Control some water into fog and clouds, magically."
He grinned manicly. "That'll work."
She was distantly aware the two of them weren't quite acting right ... too happy about the poison ... Lyos actually had forgotten about the villagers back there. No, didn't matter.
Luna projected pieces of tentacle before herself and stepped onto it. Then another, and again, creating a stairway made out of herself.
At about a hundred meters height, she had enough attention of the enemy. Lyos's clouds were rising, once all was covered, she raised the knife and called out, "This is the part where you swarm me!"
The mooks obliged.
She set her makeshift blade on fire with her fire. It wasn't really necessary, it just looked good.
Finally, one devil amongst the lot realized just what she was wearing as armor. It was just a muffled little cry of Siephied's name. She killed that one first with a single flare.
"Wait, don't! We didn't come for you anyway!" The nearest called, a second before his own death.
"Then you shouldn't have invited me to play!" she said with a smirk.
She pushed the wings into the physical world, decided physics didn't matter : they'd move through her tentacles if they had to. Only devils would die. She jumped across her own manifestations, killed with her willpower and her sword, both for fun. Her power hadn't increased, she just could use it more effectively. Luna snickered outside, and on the astral plane she roared. Eagerly she dug her claws into the nearest devils and ripped them apart slowly.
Nothing was worse for a devil than to know they died without contributing to the end of the world. She made sure a ghost of them remained, cursed to sink low on the astral planes. Xelloss had once told her the deepest levels were close to the Sea of Chaos, and the defeated suffered there with longing. She hoped it wasn't a word trick, and made a point of keeping that hope active. One of the first things Luna had learned about devils was that taking sadistic joy in their demise was on par with cutting short their food source. She didn't hate them, she enjoyed what she could do once she caught them. They got nothing out of that.
Now she was actually eating their agony, it should have been far less fun. Yet despite the poison, it was just as much fun as before.
She never stopped being Luna, and she wasn't so afraid anymore of losing herself. It didn't seem to matter much anymore.
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