Volume 3 Chapter 18 Cruel Destiny

Chapter 18 Cruel Destiny

I

With his breath, Tudius summoned a huge wave of shadow monsters.

Yanni tossed his shield towards those monsters, and the shield bounced between them and broke them into dust and ashes. Aisling summoned a rain of spores. When those spores exploded, all the shadowy minions of Tudius were blasted into smithereens.

“No!” shouted Tudius.

Aiming at Tudius, Aisling shot a stream of magical leaves towards Tudius. Those magical leaves pierced into Tudius’ skin like sharp darts.

Tudius gave off a deafening scream. Yanni leaped up and smashed down upon on Tudius’ head. Stroke by the stellarite shield, Tudius’ head began to fracture. Dark violet light leaked out from the cracks on his head.

As drastically as reacting alchemical potions, the whole body of Tudius began to tremble and react.

“Run! He is going to explode!” shouted Aisling.

However, he was too late. Tudius exploded. Fluorescent dark violet particle, which were the remains of the nexus of elementalical spheres, were released from the explosion of Tudius.

When those purple particles touched Aisling, she could feel her mind connecting to the spiritual world inside this wave of dark energy.

That was a spiritual world of absolute twistedness. It was filled with blood, desire and violence. Behind all of this was a sea of void.

Meaninglessness was the ultimate concept that all elementalical spheres contained.

She could feel the dark energy corrupting her brain with those twisted visions of blood, insanity and torturing. She wanted to scream.

Suddenly, she found something. She found a spark that didn’t belong to the power of void. It was a spark of hope which was resonating with her.

Closing her eyes, she began to evoke the power of Life.

A rain of spores was descending from the sky of this corrupted spiritual realm and all those twisted visions were destroyed by the spores. Thousands strips of vines were growing out from the destroyed visions. Sometimes, light was born out of darkness.

The spiritual realm of darkness was broken … Those twisted visions began to disappear …

II

Stasha and Floria were fighting the shadow monsters outside of the Internection.

Floria was shooting arrows and Stasha was protecting her with her daggers.

“There were too many monsters!” shouted Stasha.

“I know … I hope Yanni is OK,” muttered Floria.

The shadow monsters had crawled to the front of Floria and Stasha. Floria put her hand into her quiver and found it empty. She had no more arrows now. Stasha was panting with fatigue too. They were outnumbered and they had lost.

The shadow monsters buried the two with their bodies. Stasha and Floria felt suffocated. They had run out of breath and soon they would be smothered to death. Their consciousnesses were fading and they had closed their eyes, waiting for the death.

“Stasha, before we die, I have something to tell you!” screamed Floria.

“What do you want to tell me?” asked Stasha.

“Stasha, I … I …” stuttered Floria.

When Floria was about to tell her how she felt about her, a surge of energy burst out from the centre of the Internection. It was a familiar surge of energy, because it was the magical energy that belonged to Aisling.

All those shadow monsters dissipated. When Stasha and Floria opened their eyes once again, the black mists had disappeared and the crevasses that once tore the land apart had already closed.

However, all the people that had once been devoured by the black mist were all dead and their corpses had already rotten. All the buildings looked decayed with their walls oxidized.

Yanni and Aisling ran out of the building.

“Yanni!” Floria ran up to her younger brother and hugged him tight, while Aisling was looking at them two, zoning out.

Stasha patted her hand on Aisling’s shoulder and smiled. Aisling smiled back.

“Let’s leave this city now. There was too much radiation here. We had the power of Sylvana so that we wouldn’t be hurt much by the radiation. But the radiation was still uncomfortable. It made me want to wretch,” proposed Aisling.

“OK, but I’m a little tired,” sighed Stasha.

“Let’s take a rest as soon as we leave the radiational area,” advised Floria.

“Good idea,” Yanni nodded.

“Well, what did you want to say to me when we were about to be suffocated to death by those shadow monsters, Floria?” questioned Stasha curiously.

“I’ll tell you when … when …” stammered Floria.

“When the time come?” guessed Stasha.

“Yep … When the time come,” agreed Floria, flushing.

Slowly, the four walked out of this decayed city.

After the black mist, all the commons in this city had died due to their exposure to excessive radiation. Some vultures and other carrion birds had flew to this city to the greatest feast in their life. They were mutating at a visible speed.

“I have a strange feeling. I think we four are like a harbinger of disaster. Whichever city we came to, there would be something destructive happening to that city. Titan Forge City, Scuropolis, Le Meraviglie, and this Cheum City. We’re not the cause of the disasters, but we’re a sign, and a warning,” Stasha pointed out.

Stasha was right. Titan Forge and Scuropolis were destroyed by those necrological locusts of Professor Fame; Le Meraviglie was destroyed by the mechanization planed by Macchina Gloriosa; now Cheum had been destroyed by the explosion of the nexus of elementalical spheres, but the four didn’t know who did this .

They were really a sign of bad luck to cities.

“Harbinger … That’s true. We always bring disasters,” agreed Yanni.

“The Rain of Regrowth will be the greatest disaster that we four bring,” muttered Aisling, looking up to the sky.

The dawn had risen, and the night had end.

In the east, the sun was rising from under the sea of clouds, dying the skyline red.

There were some dews on the purplish grasses of the endless barren grassland.

The four left the city and set a campfire in the blighted wilderness. The morning wind was blowing hard against them and they felt a little cold.

After taking a short snap together, the four began to eat the breakfast which had been stored in Aisling’s Pocket Dimension.

“How long before we can get to the Palace of Fungruus?” asked Aisling, emotionlessly.

“Approximately two weeks,” answered Floria.

“Two weeks. There’re still two weeks left in my life,” murmured Aisling.

III

At dusk.

The four found a small river and they decided to camp beside it. The sounds of streaming water were like a symphony of beautiful music.

Their old cart had been destroyed by the black mist in Cheum city, but they got a new cart by robbing a coachman on that main road which led to Singreum city where Fungruus’ palace lay.

Now, the horse of the cart was eating the purplish weeds beside the flowing river, while the four were enjoying their dinner.

Aisling provided some food that she stored in the Pocket Dimension while Floria caught some fishes and roasted them on the campfire. It was a sumptuous dinner.

Yanni was looking at Aisling. She had been zoning out for a whole day. She didn’t say a word during the trip today. He could understand her feeling. After all, the day of death was coming close to her day by day.

Her life was about to end. She was just 19. For elf, a 19 year-old girl was no different with a small baby. She hadn’t figured out the meaning of her life yet but now the day of death was waiting for her.

Two weeks. There were only 14 days left for Aisling. After 14 days, she would either sacrifice her life to the Altar of Life or be defeated and killed by Fungruus.

Aisling was looking at the food but she didn’t eat anything. Clearly, she didn’t have the appetite right now.

Without saying anything, Yanni put his arm around Aisling.

“I am not ready, Yanni. I am so confused … Why is my life like this … ” Aisling couldn’t help but burst into tears.

She had been through a lot of sufferings during her life. The death of her parents, the extinction of her race, endless solitude, separation with her friends … Her heart was always dominated by sadness but she always tried to smile in front of her friend.

However, she couldn’t stand it right now. She wanted to cry.

Yanni didn’t know how to reassure her at all …

“Your life seems miserable, but … You have one thing that others may never get even if they can live for hundreds of years …” Yanni reassured her.

“What thing?” asked Aisling.

“You have us. You have three friends who love you unconditionally. We are like a family, Aisling,” Stasha consoled her.

“Will you support me if I … If I run from this? I don’t want to die. I want to run away, even if the world will be ruined by Trigon if I run away but I … I fear …” sobbed Aisling.

“For sure I will support you. Remember that diviner we met in Le Meraviglie? She said that you could choose your own path of life,” Yanni stroked her hair.

“I want to hide from this, like that man who cut his leg to run from the war,” whispered Aisling with tears streaming down her cheeks.

“For sure we can run away. Where do you want to go?” queried Yanni.

“I don’t know … Maybe we can find a way to … To go to the moon. We can live on the moon or … Or we can live in Santo Cielo. Trigon may ruin the earth with his secretions, but Santo Cielo won’t be affected, right? We can hide in the Temple of Cuore Celeste. No one will find that grotto … All the high elves have sacrificed themselves to guide me to the Sanctum of Life, but … But I don’t care … I just want to be with you three until … Until the end of the world …” stammered Aisling quietly.

There were some fishes swimming in the river. Moonlight poured down from the high sky and melted into the river water. Everything was drowned the night of tranquillity.

Aisling knew deep in heart that she could never stay with her friends until the end of the world.

Her friends would die within a century because they were humans.

IV

After the dinner, the four were sitting beside the campfire in silence Aisling had been overcome with her emotion temporarily. Her tears had been dried by the wind of the night.

Now, she was holding Yanni’s arm tightly. Sometimes physical intimacy could calm her down.

Beside the four, the horse that pulled their cart was eating the grass quietly. The horse didn’t need to worry about anything except the food. It didn’t know what Aisling was fearing either because the only thing it needed to do was chewing the mutant purplish grass.

Normal girls at Aisling’s age, no matter elves or humans, would worry about love, friendship and other secular stuff. However, Aisling needed to worry about her fate of death …

“Yanni, I’m sorry to say those words. I am not ready but I have to do this. I have no choice. What Stasha said was right. I am a lucky girl. I have your friendship, which is the most precious thing in this world to me …” whispered Aisling calmly.

“We will all die one day, Aisling. Whether sooner or later, this day will come,” drawled Yanni.

“That’s true,” agreed Aisling.

“We will follow your choice anyway, Aisling. If you want to run away, let’s run away. Like you said, we could hide in Santo Cielo. That flying archipelago is totally safe for us. It is a paradise now. We can spend our whole life here,” proposed Yanni.

“If I don’t die after two weeks, my life can be hellishly long, you know,” Aisling laughed bitterly.

“Anyway, one of us would finally leave the other. That’s cruel,” summarized Yanni.

“Am I a coward, Yanni? The assassins are willing to sacrifice themselves to give me a chance to stop Macchina Gloriosa, while the high elves are willing to sacrifice themselves to guide me to the Sanctum of Life … However, I am always hesitant to sacrifice … I feel as if I were a coward …” breathed Aisling.

“My mother said that the if one isn’t afraid of death at all, her or his life must be pathetic. You’re nostalgic for your life because your life is happy. You have someone whom you love and cherish, and that’s why you fear the death,” Stasha reassured her.

Aisling nodded peacefully. She looked at the bright moon on the sky. She really wanted to fly to the moon and run from earth’s stuff.

“I want … Umm …” Aisling blushed shyly.

“What do you want?” asked Floria with a smile.

“I want to hug ... I want to hug all of you,” stuttered Aisling, her face reddening.

Tenderly, Aisling gave a hug to all of her friends. The memory of mother and father had become distant memories. She could remember those bedtime stories and what her mother said to her before passing away … However, their faces had been blurry.

She couldn’t remember what her parents looked like …

If there wasn’t a destiny for her to sacrifice herself, after centuries, she would definitely forget what Yanni, Stasha and Floria looked like. She would rather die …

The fate was cruel to Aisling, but it had given her the greatest friends she could have.

After hugging her friends, she kissed Yanni tenderly on his lip. She could feel their bodies melting with each other.

“ĭᛆᚵ ᛅᛚᛌᚴᛆᚱ ᛑᛁᚵ ᛌᛆᛆ ᛉᚤᛍᚴᛂᛐ,” said Aisling.

“ᚮᛍᚴ ᛑᛂᛐ ᚵᚯᚱ ĭᛆᚵ,” returned Yanni.

“Oh, come on, please stop flirting in Elvish …” tittered Stasha.

“Well, I suddenly find that I am the only monolingual of us four,” revealed Floria.

“Do you want to learn Desertish? I can teach you and in the future we two can flirt in Desertish …” asked Stasha.

“Good idea,” giggled Floria.