Chapter 37 - The Dam

Luna hurried backwards as Blüt loomed above her. Her brain didn’t work anymore. She just flung spell after spell at him. A Munditia, a Glacia, a Thunderclap, everything her arsenal had she tossed at Blüt, but he merely marched forward, laughing as he trampled trees in his wake. Every explosion reformed in a moment, every bit of freezerburnt flesh thawed, the lightning spells were the worst; they conducted through Blüt’s body and damaged Merri too, each of her screams causing only more psychological strain on Luna.

Each of them were too weak, she had no time to charge up with him pursuing her. Her only advantage was her size and speed, but she would eventually be caught, stamina was no issue for an immortal, after all.

“Too weak, too weak, too weak!” Luna’s mind screamed at her, leaving her unable to find any clarity of thought. There were no avenues of escape anymore, even from external sources: Sol was unconscious in the river, body burned all over, Clint was back in Lillinberg, there was no one but herself to call on.

Her arms and mind grew weary beyond the actual strain she had put them under. “...I’m too weak.” Luna huffed, defeated. Attacking was futile, so was thinking, so was moving. She ceased everything, stopping still as she waited for Blüt to catch up.

Her mind emptied. All she could picture was a dried up river of possibility. There was no water, no streams splitting off, there was nothing left for her.

As Blüt stood above her and readied his fist, which she was certain would pulverise her, she thought back to the first time she felt this way. The first time all possibility dried up for her and she became such a limited, pathetic thing…

There was a dam. A dam in her mind that restrained the flow of her potential. A dam so fundamental, she had forgotten it was even there… A dam placed there by her mother.

“Luna, where are we going?” Sol whispered, following his sister under the cover of darkness.

“The forest, duh! Where else are we supposed to fight with Mom around? You know she’d never let us!” Luna responded in a hushed tone, carefully identifying a crack in the palace walls for them to sneak out from.

“Isn’t the forest dangerous?” Sol probed, struggling to fit his larger body through the gap.

“Sure, but we’re the prince and princess of Gallia, aren’t we? We’ll just beat any enemies up!” Luna grinned.

Sol sighed, but shrugged. “I guess.”

The twins knew their mother’s eyes reached far, and her vision even farther. As a result, they headed deep into the woods. They left in the evening, but by the time they realised they were lost, it was already dark.

“Luna, maybe we should call for help? It’s late now…” Sol muttered.

“Nah, we’ll be fine! If anything bad happens, we can always cast a spell. The maids always have a Detect Magic up, so if they see our signatures, they’ll know straight away where we are.” Luna educated him.

“What if there’s something else magical around us? Wouldn’t that make it hard for them to see where we are?” Sol raised a good point, but Luna waved it off.

“Magic? Around here? Don’t be dumb! Look, there’s nothing like that around here.” Luna cast a Detect Magic of her own. She expected nothing, but found it flooded with red mana signatures.

“Dire Deer?” Sol asked nervously.

“No, if they’re all packed together like this…” Luna recalled a book she had read on the topic with dread. “Wolves…”

The first wolf came from the darkness, immediately at Sol. They were battle-hungry creatures, they took on the biggest prey first.

He managed to block, but the wolf quickly dug its tusk-like teeth into his forearm, earning a pained yelp from the boy. Quickly, another emerged, taking advantage of his downed position to stamp a large paw into his chest, winding him.

Luna struggled to pull her gaze away from Sol, but she had to focus. Enemies could come from any angle, she had to consider all of them. She recalled several pieces of information.

First, her scan with Detect Magic. Judging by the two that attacked Sol, she had a vague estimation of where they all were.

Second, the book she had read. She recalled how they attacked. They were pack hunters that went for staggered blows, but they were also dire creatures, with little regard for safety. Unlike normal wolves, which would back up and surround a target even after attacking and only aim for disabling blows and kill-shots, these things were brutes; once they were in, they were in. For that reason, she knew she wouldn’t have to worry about the two on Sol aiming for her next.

Information just kept flooding Luna’s brain, patterns and logical flows came together like a grand river, all of it flowing and allowing her to see a number of possibilities. She recalled the size of each of the mana signatures, proportional to the size of the Dire Wolves’ bodies. The two largest went for Sol, so it’d be only logical for the third largest to target her next now that Sol was incapacitated. And the third largest was… There!

Luna kicked behind her. Without even looking she landed a brutal kick to the wolf’s throat, sending it falling back and struggling to breathe. “Hypothesis confirmed.” She thought. “They attack in size order… Therefore!” Luna followed the path of logic, progressing down the river.

The fourth wolf came leaping from in front of her. She ducked beneath it, grabbing it by the legs and using its own momentum against it. She tossed it straight at the two wolves attacking Sol, sending all three careening away.

Sol was barely conscious, losing blood rapidly from his arm and struggling for breath. He was going to faint shortly, but he was awake long enough to see Luna in action. Calm. Viciously calm, like the ocean before a tsunami.

“Three out of the way. Readings showed five. One unaccounted for remaining. Previous target likely recovered from kick to the throat.” Luna noted. Each thought happened in less than a second, but something about that still frustrated her.

The smallest wolf arrived. It ran low at her, not leaping like the others. “I didn’t account for this… Not thinking fast enough…” She muttered to herself. It managed to bite her leg. “Enemy opportunity.” Flashed in her mind.

She kicked the low wolf away, but it left an opportunity for another wolf to leap in from behind. She was already aware, she ducked, allowing it to pass overhead. It missed its lethal bite, but it kicked its legs midair, allowing it to regain balance and giving her arm a nasty slash.

From behind, she heard growling. “Two sets. Third flanking.” She assessed the flow of the river. It was spinning off into new streams, countless possibilities, but all of them visible. “No aggression. Counter. Time it.”

Two wolves ran at her from behind, but she leapt above them, bringing a foot each down on their heads. As she stood above them, she leveraged their robust necks fighting against her feet like spring boards to fling her further in the air.

“Berserk animals. Predictable. If Luna equals vulnerable, target attacks. If target attacks then counter. Use momentum.” Luna’s sclera were drowning under the blue of her irises, eyes so wide that they were lakes in their own right, but merely windows into the ever-growing river of possibility she was beginning to see.

Another wolf leapt high to meet her mid-air. “As predicted.” She reached out toward it. The beast clawed at her arms, but it was acceptable damage. Her target was its head. She grabbed it by either side of the neck, grip firm on the scruff. From there, momentum and gravity did the work. She rolled forward, turning her fall into a flip. She and the wolf span together, rotating three times before she finally slammed the beast hard into the ground, killing it instantly.

Her strength alone would have never achieved the level of power necessary for such a feat, she was only twelve after all, but with what she was seeing and what she was feeling, that limit didn’t seem to exist.

Luna panted, blood was pouring from several large gashes across her body, but she didn’t care in the slightest. Her mind was working so fast, scanning hundreds of possibilities every second. “I’m one step away… Little more. Too many words. No… Two words… Too many. Need silence. One? No. Zero.”

A smile developed on her face, even as she grew paler from blood loss. It was ecstacy, something akin to divinity, enlightenment, in a way. The remaining four wolves surrounded her on all sides, but that only made it better. It only increased the possibilities. If she kept going at the rate she was, she’d be able to see everything. “This is it…” Luna thought without words, “I’m tapping on the door of infinity.”

“Luna Dragoneart!” A voice like a storm raged above her.

The calm in her eyes disappeared, the smile was wiped from her face. All of a sudden, she felt the door slipping away. She reached out to grab it, bloody hands flailing in front of her, but it just grew further and further away as her world fell from reach and reality crept back in.

The Dire Wolves were reduced to ash in an instant, lightning charring them to crisps in quick succession, sourced from something floating above… Queen Venus.

“M-mom?” Luna could hardly contain herself, a mixture of confusion and excitement in her voice as she struggled to come down from the high she had just felt.

Venus descended, walking up to her daughter. Luna ran to meet her, words spilling from her mouth incomprehensibly. “Mom, I saw it! I saw the door! …No, I saw everything! The river! Every path that flowed from it! Every possibility! They were all there, Mom, I could see-”

A sharp pain blasted across Luna’s cheek, rattling her brain and erasing her thoughts. Her face stung, but her mind stung worse. She was short-circuited in a way that only parental discipline could cause. Her mother had slapped her.

“You idiot, girl! What were you doing?” Venus’ tone surprised her. It wasn’t angry, not fully, it was fearful, disappointed, sad, shocked, as many emotions as there were colours in her mother’s infinitely shifting eyes. “Fighting Dire Wolves? Barehanded? They were going to tear you apart, Luna!”

Luna struggled to focus, looking up at her mother with a frown. “But-”

“You almost got yourself and your brother killed! Look at your injuries! You’re covered in blood!” Venus gripped her by the shoulders, holding her in place as she inspected every injured inch.

“But I was-” Luna tried again, but she was met by the most horrible thing she had ever seen.

Her mother looked down on her. Expression twisted in a way no child could imagine. If there was one certainty every child is born with, it is that their parents love them. This is an absolute reality for a child, and to break it, especially at such a young age, is an experience that will damn them for life.

And this expression did damn Luna. For the first time since she was born, she believed that her mother did not love her. It was only for a moment, but it left a scar on her soul.

But the worst was yet to come… Next, came these words.

“You can’t go around fighting things like this, Luna! You…” She breathed in, the intake of air making way for words that would etch their way into every element of Luna’s being, mind, body and soul. “You’re weak!”

Luna was catatonic. She didn’t hear the rest of her mother’s lecture, just fell limp in her grasp as those overwhelming emotions and those two accursed words buried themselves into her core.

From that day onward, Luna would never again tap the door to infinity, and she would never truly see the river of possibilities flow as it once did. She was a limited existence from that point on. She was weak… Now, and for the rest of her life.

“What if…?” Luna dared to think. She could see the dam again. Aware of it for the first time since it was placed there. “What if I could break through that dam?” She wondered.

She walked up to it, running her hands along the smooth surface. It was all consuming. No matter where she looked or how far she walked, it kept going, onward and onward. It was infinite. No way around it. No way over it. But perhaps…

She was certain that she would never get through this dam for all of her life. That was an absolute fact… But at this point, wasn’t her life already over? Blüt’s fist was a foot away from her, it carried so much force that she’d be crushed to paste beneath it. She was dead, with no other possibility.

So why not now? Why not, with her life over, try and break through the dam? After all, for as infinitely tall and infinitely broad as it was… It didn’t feel particularly strong… Perhaps all she had to do was… Punch?

Zero words. No thoughts. Luna swung her fist. It was an infinitesimally weaker punch compared to Blüt’s, but she threw it anyway with grace and precision.

It hit the side of his knuckle, not hard, but hard enough. The entire trajectory of his fist was changed, now careening past Luna. His momentum became his enemy, fist burying itself into the earth as all its force was redirected by just her small movement.

The flow of possibility resumed. Luna was alive. More alive than she had ever been since her encounter with the Dire Wolves. The dam had broken.