Volume 3 Chapter 10 Exodus of Aislina

Chapter 10 Exodus of Aisling

I

Floria, Yanni and Stasha were exploring in the office of Cheius. It was a big room and Floria found a worktable on it.

There was a book on Cheius’ worktable. Yanni opened the book and tried to read it. However, the book is written in Reauneish and he couldn’t understand a single word of it.

Fortunately, there were many illustrations in this book. The art in Reauneia was pretty abstract and those illustrations were really hard to understand.

“I wish we had an interpreter,” complaint Yanni.

“Perhaps Mouiguia can translate it for us,” guessed Floria.

However, Mouiguia was already gone. Obviously, she was afraid of Cheius and she didn’t dare to get close to Cheius’ office.

“This place is Cheius’ office, right? But obviously, Cheius is not here. Where is he?” questioned Yanni.

“Maybe we can wait here for him. This is his office, and I believe that he will final come back … No, it’s not a good plan … Wait, what is this?” Floria pointed to a test tube filled with mysterious transparent liquid on the worktable.

Yanni looked the bottle, and voluntarily, he put his hand on the surface of the test tube. The liquid inside the test tube was cold, but Yanni could sense a gust of warmth streaming through all his veins and neuros. It was comfortable.

“Wow, there’s some kind of power inside this test tube. There is not evilness lurking inside it … There is only … absolute purity …” stammered Yanni, at a loss of word. Clearly, he didn’t know how to describe his feeling properly.

“You’re being iffy, Yanni!” complaint Floria.

“Try to touch it if you don’t believe,” proposed Yanni.

Floria walked up to the tube, but when she was about to touch it, Stasha called out to her.

“Floria!” she called.

“Um?” Floria turned her head and looked at Stasha.

“There is something wrong with this room,” explained Stasha.

“What do you mean?” asked Floria.

Stasha closed her eyes and began to hit her tuning forks. It began to vibrate and soundwaves filled the whole room. Stasha was feeling the soundwaves and finally she sensed something through the reflection of those soundwaves …

Carefully, she walked to a bookshelf in this room.

“There is a secret chamber behind this bookshelf,” revealed Stasha.

“If what you say is true, there must be some kind of mechanism which can be triggered to open the door,” guessed Floria.

“No, it’s not so complicated,” muttered Yanni.

He walked up to the bookshelf and pulled it down to the ground with brute force. With a gust of thunderous sounds, the bookshelf broke up into piece.

Then, with full strength, Yanni hit the wall behind the bookshelf with his stellarite shield. The wall commenced to rupture, and soon, the wall was shocked into pieces by Yanni’s stellarite shield.

Stasha was right, there was a secret chamber there.

The chamber was dark and Cheius was there, wrapped in his iconic black robe. He was sitting and meditating before an altar-like device, lying on which was Cuore Celeste, the legendary gemstone from Santo Cielo.

“Finally, you’re here. You have ten minutes,” drawled Cheius.

“Ten minutes? What do you mean?” asked Yanni.

“If you don’t beat me in ten minutes. Cuore Celeste will be destroyed by my Engine of Antilife, and so will the Sanctum of Life. You will not succeed, because the Engine of Antilife is with me in this room. I have been building this engine which contains the most energetic water elementium in this world for ten years, and because of the long-term exposure to the special radiation emanated by this engine, I have become like this. Now, the power of the engine will destroy you, as well as the Sanctum of Life!” intoned Cheius.

Cheius snapped his fingers and this chamber began to mutate. The four walls of the room turned from inorganic into organic as if this reality had been corrupted by some sort of forces of flesh.

Bloodshot eyeballs began to grow out from the wall like some kind of plants: the eyestalks were like the stems and the lenses were like flowers.

Those eyeballs kept staring at the four. There were also some mouths and other kinds of organs appearing on the surface of the walls of flesh. This chamber, including the walls and the ceiling, was becoming an organic creature, a unity of flesh.

There were also tentacles everywhere. Those tentacles reached towards the three in order to entwine them, but Stasha drew her daggers and cut those tentacles into pieces.

The three felt a surge of nausea crawling through their intestines and stomachs. They wanted to vomit but they breathed deeply to resist the nauseous feeling.

Floria shot a stream of arrows towards Cheius. The arrows pierced through Cheius’ body and blood was streaming down from his wound. However, Cheius was not injured at all. He pulled out the arrows from his body and some tentacles reached to him, releasing organic matter to fix his body.

“You cannot beat me, because I am invincible in this chamber … No matter how hard you injure me, this chamber will fix me. The chamber is a living being itself, created by me and my Engine of Antilife,” teased Cheius.

“The gemstone! Take the gemstone!” yelled Floria.

Floria was right. Their aim is to retake Cuore Celeste instead of defeating Cheius.

Hearing her words, Yanni and Stasha ran up to the Engine of Antilife while Floria covered them with her arrows.

Stasha tried to pull Cuore Celeste off the engine but the gemstone was completely glued to it. Upon touching the gemstone, Stasha was corrupted by those organic elementalical matters on its surface. Those matters poked into her skin and went into her veins. Her veins were turning black.

Gathering his full strength, Yanni smashed the Engine of Antilife with his stellarite shield, but this engine was even more durable than the Mother Matrix, and Yanni couldn’t destroy it at all.

“Give up, Normanians! You will fail!” sneezed Cheius.

He snapped his finger again, and some tentacles wound themselves round Floria’s bow. The tentacles pulled the stellarite bow off Floria’s arm and entangled her. Wrapped in loathsome tentacles, Floria screamed in horror.

Now, both Floria and Stasha had been incapacitated. Soon, they would die too. Floria was going to be suffocated to death by the tentacles, while Stasha’s blood would be fully corrupted and assimilated by the Engine of Antilife.

“It’s your turn!” Cheius looked at Yanni, thinking about how to kill him.

Five minutes. After five minutes, the Cuore Celeste would be fully devoured and assimilated by the Engine of Antilife. When it was destroyed, the whole dimension inside it would be destroyed too, including Aisling and the Sanctum of Life.

Suddenly, Yanni smelled something. It was a gust of fragrance coming from the worktable of Cheius.

It was that test tube with mysterious liquid. That liquid was resonating with his blood which had been baptized with the Spring of Sylvana. It was calling him.

Now, Yanni knew what that liquid was.

It was rainwater from the Rain of Regrowth.

Some tentacles entwined his ankle, but he broke free from them and ran towards that test tube.

Cheius was smart and he had figured out what Yanni wanted.

“No, no!” he shouted in despair. With his full strength, Cheius manipulated the tentacles to reach for Yanni. There were some mouth-like structures appearing on those eyeballs that grew out from the wall, and inside the mouths were sharp teeth and tongues.

The tongues were reaching for Yanni too and they were ready to pull him into the mouth and crush him with those nightmarish teeth.

Fortunately, Yanni ran fast. He escaped the chamber, held the test tube in his hand, and threw it towards the Engine of Antilife.

All the rainwater inside the test tube poured down onto the Engine of Antilife and Cuore Celeste that was glued to it. The engine was trembling and rupturing.

The water elementium that composed the engine commenced to react with the Rainwater of Regrowth and within seconds, the engine turned into dust and ashes.

“No, no! You bastard!” shouted Cheius.

II

At the same time …

Aisling was hiding inside the Sanctum of Life.

The magical barrier set up by the high elves had collapsed and the whole town of high elves had been invaded and corrupted by the power of flesh. Buildings had turned into monsters composed of flesh and trees were transformed into octopus tentacles.

Now, the whole dimension had been assimilated into the world of flesh. All the soils and stones had become organic and everything merged into a unity, a titanic aberrational lifeform which was as big as a whole dimension.

In despair, Aisling was now sitting around the Altar of Life, waiting for her death.

Tears were streaming down from her eyes. She wanted to say the last goodbye to her friends but she had no chance now. She was going to die alone.

When all the hope seemed to end, something amazing happened.

It began to rain.

Clouds began to appear in the sky and raindrops were pouring down from it.

When the raindrops touched those aberrational eyeballs, octopus tentacles and other organs growing out from the organic land, they would turn into grey harmless ashes.

Aisling walked out of the Sanctum of Life and let the rain pour down on her face. It was comfortable, and she could sense the pure sacred power the rain contained. Walking in the rain, her hair and her cloth were wet. She let the rain water penetrate into her skin and stream through her veins. She felt comfortable.

The heavenly rain had purified the whole dimension. All the corruption had died. It could be said to be a lesser version of the Rain of Regrowth.

Humming with joy, Aisling ran to the portal, through which she could leave this dimension. She couldn’t wait to reunite with her friends.

Anyway, this dimension was not completely purified yet so that the Altar of Life was still unusable. It was easier to purify Cuore Celeste outside of this dimension than inside it. Therefore, Aisling had to leave here first …

III

Cheius stared at Yanni wrathfully.

He had been building this Engine of Antilife for years. Now Yanni had destroyed it. He had failed Fungruus and Fungruus would punish him hard.

Ragefully, he summoned a tentacle and manipulated it to entwine Yanni’s neck. Yanni was struggling but that tentacle was too strong. He couldn’t break free from it. His neck was clutched tight by it. He was losing air and his head was aching. His sight blurred …

It was said that when a person was about to die, he would see his whole life.

Right now, Yanni was going through this process.

The earliest thing he could remember is having a dinner with his father, mother and sister. At that time his mother was alive and his father was a smart blacksmith without dementia. Everyone was eating the dinner happily.

When his mother was gone, he felt void. Luckily, Floria was always with him. She was the greatest sister in this world …

Time flew fast … When he was twelve, he and Floria got lost in the Dream Forest. They were chased by a mutant spider, and luckily, they were saved by an elf girl. It was the first time for them to see an elf, which they had only heard in fairy tales before. The name of that elf girl was Aisling.

She became his best friend … And he had fallen in love with her gradually …

But they couldn’t be together. She was an elf. Elves could live for centuries and humans’ lives were as short as the lives of cicadas to them.

He opened his eyes once again. He could feel that some part of him was leaving his body. Cheius was smirking wickedly.

Yanni’s muscles were trembling and weakening. Some parts of him were leaving him.

Suddenly, when he was about to pass out, Cuore Celeste gave off a surge of dazzling colourful lights. The lights merged into a beautiful rainbow.

Aisling came out of this portal of rainbow, particles of lights dancing among her fingers.

“Who are you?” Cheius looked at her scornfully.

“I am Aisling, the last elf in this world, the fated bringer of the Rain of Regrowth, the priestess of the Sanctum of Life,” drawled Aisling solemnly. She was glowing in green lights. Right now, she looked like a angels carrying the message of the Holy Light.

“No, it is not going to happen! No! No one can stop the rise of Trigon! No one!” shouted Cheius.

“Unluckily, I can,” Aisling smiled.

“I will destroy you!” yelled Cheius.

All tentacles started to reach for Aisling in an attempt to tear her into pieces.

Closing her eyes, Aisling began to resonate with the world of nature. She could feel the vines, flowers, and leaves …

With a gust of ear-spitting sounds, all the four walls of this sinister chamber collapsed, and vines began to grow out from the ruins, on which flowers were flourishing prosperously.

Cheius was completely entangled by the vines summoned by Aisling.

“No! You will fail, elf. The era of elves and druids have already ended. The brand new era of humans will come!” growled Cheius.

“The era of humans will come one day, but that will be the era of pure humans who believe kindness and truth, instead of twisted monsters like you,” returned Aisling.

With a pull, the vines ripped Cheius to shreds.

Cheius died, and this chamber resumed.

Panting in horror, Yanni breathed a mouthful of fresh air. That Cheius nearly choked him to death. Now, he was lying on the ground weakly.

Aisling walked up to him.

“Aisling, you’re …” stammered Yanni, half unconscious, half awake.

Tenderly, Aisling sat around him and began to heal him with her magic. Bathed in Aisling’s magic, he felt so comfortable …