Daylight

Across her several years fighting Shadows, Helia had never seen anything like this. It possessed two wings that spanned across a dozen meters, flapping incessantly to keep its massive body flying. Four paws adorned with menacing claws, a tail bigger than Ceres himself, and a long neck on top of which its head sat, its mouth wide open as it looked at them with hatred.

It was big enough to completely cover the Sun, dimming sunlight in a way that reminded Helia of an eclipse. How was it out during the day, seemingly unbothered? Did it not know it was supposed to hate light?

Shadow attacks happening during storms, or particularly cloudy days, wasn’t unheard of. Only the most powerful, or perhaps arrogant, of Shadows, did come out during the day when the conditions were right. It was usually more surprising than it was dangerous, since they were still unsettled by the Sun, even through the cover of the clouds.

Helia fell to her knees, retching. That morning’s breakfast left her body as her head spun. Her heart thumped so hard it was as if it was also trying to escape her. This couldn’t be. It was wrong. That thing should really stop existing, because she couldn’t bear it anymore.

There was no sound in the world other than the beating of her heart and a loud ringing noise in her ears. She stopped herself from collapsing on the floor with her hands and knees, using all her strength.

The cadence of the ringing changed. Helia tried locating the source, but her head was too heavy. Something pushed her, and her body flew several meters, enveloped in a familiar greenness.

“Helia! Snap out if it! Helia!”, the ringing sound transformed into a voice that she recognized. She was being shaken violently, which made the nausea come back. After dealing with that, she blinked several times, and her eyes were finally able to focus on the shape of her partner, Ceres. Behind him, on the spot where she used to be, dark flames rose, rapidly evaporating into the air.

“That’s… Not… That’s impossible”, was all she could say.

“Impossible or not, it’s coming!”, answered Ceres, looking upwards. The draconic Shadow roared, circling above them. The air in front of its jaw distorted, converging into another mass of darkness.

Helia shook her head, inhaled, and slapped her face with both hands. That thing terrified her, but she had to stop thinking about it, or they would both be done for. Around them, light began to dim, signalling the impending arrival of the dark flames. She ran with the Wind on her back, hiding behind a building far away enough.

“It’s too late to run away, isn’t it?”, she asked her partner as she took an arrow out, tensing her bowstring.

“I would be very surprised if it let us leave”, asserted Ceres.

“And here I thought all those Handlers and warriors had been defeated by the flying swarm, that will teach me”, sighed Helia, stepping outside of her cover.

With a swish, the shining arrow flew, carried upwards by a powerful Wind, until it struck its target. However, the Shadow didn’t even seem to care, the projectile serving only to reveal their location. They promptly fled, taking cover behind another small house.

“Lumiranite probably won’t cut it”, said Ceres, mirroring what Helia was thinking.

“You’ll have to take me closer, then”, nodded Helia, stepping closer to him as he lowered his wings to allow her to jump on his back.

As another shadowy projectile arrived towards their position, Ceres took off, keeping himself close to the ground as he gained speed.

“Hold on tight”, he told Helia as a strong Wind lifted them, avoiding yet another attack.

Tensing her thighs and hugging Ceres’ neck, Helia was really glad for all the time they had spent training flying together. She had also mastered the art of landing gracefully, accompanied by the Wind, despite her best efforts to avoid it. Falling down was never fun.

The Shadow roared and flapped its enormous wings, taking off after them. It hurled dark projectiles in their direction, but Ceres was able to avoid them by gliding left and right. With a sudden Wind, he turned sharply to his right, letting the Shadow pass them on their left, at which point Helia was able to hit it directly with two rays of Divine.

It screeched in response, struggling to turn around and face them at its current speed. So instead, it flayed its tail around, trying to strike them directly, but Ceres closed both wings and made them drop a few meters, narrowly avoiding the attack. As the Spirit flew below the Shadow. Helia assaulted it some more with sacred moonlight.

She had hit it with three direct Divine attacks, and a Divine lumiranite arrow, and so far, while it seemed to elicit a response, it didn’t seem to hurt it that much. She tapped Ceres’ neck three times in their agreed upon pattern, one long hit, two short hits, to signal for him to land. He gave her a cryptic look, but didn’t question her call.

They already had its full attention because of Helia’s Handling, so Ceres flew in front of it to provoke it further. His flying path twisted and turned in all directions, making him unpredictable and avoiding the shadowy projectiles and the beast’s jaw trying to bite them, while Helia held on with all her strength. The Shadow was so engrossed by them, that it didn’t even notice Ceres kept flying closer to the floor with each maneuver.

Until, suddenly, as Ceres dodged another intimidating crunch by flying above the beast in a loop backwards, the Shadow crashed into the inn. With a loud booming sound, the building started crumbling as the Shadow tried in vain to regain its footing. Holding out both of her hands, Helia focused her entire self on bringing forth as much Divine power as she was able to. She was still sitting atop of her partner, feeling the Mana seep into her directly from his body.

With a scream, she let it all out at once, the light coming out from her hands in two powerful torrents. Her body started falling backwards from the recoil, but she felt Ceres’ Wind catch her and keep her back straight, allowing her to intensify her assault.

The Shadow wriggled and flailed around, destroying the inn further. Its loud, painful yells made Helia’s head dizzy, but she didn’t stop. She drew the shape of the creature's body with her light, gradually erasing its darkness.

After a few seconds that felt like an eternity, the Shadow got on its feet once again. Dark smoke emitted from its body, preceding its purification, but this was also when it would be most dangerous. With its hollow eyes set on Helia, it spat dark flames, continuously, roaring. Ceres started flying once again, trying to create as much distance between them as possible and avoiding the fiery assault.

Mimicking the Shadow’s previous attack, Helia tried concentrating her Divine into spheres, that she then hurled at the creature, with various degrees of success. More and more smoke rose from its body, darkness oozing on the floor following its trajectory. Unable to take flight anymore, it ran towards them, desperate, destroying everything in its path.

Without warning, Helia felt Ceres falter and tip slightly to his left. She had not noticed the slimy shadow touching the tip of his wing. He fought to keep going as long as possible, but after a few seconds, he fell to the ground, throwing Helia off his back to put as much distance as possible between her and the Shadow. She rolled a few meters before a tree stopped her with a painful thump.

Breathless, she got up as quick as she could manage with her bruised body, frantically looking for Ceres. He was doing his best to stop the Shadow’s rampage, throwing Wind after Wind at him with his untouched wing, and trying to physically block his advance with his beak. None of it worked for more than a second, but that was all Helia needed to fire all the power she had left at him.

With both hands together in front of her chest, screaming, a blinding torrent of light emerged from her and hit the Shadow once again. Unable to reach her through the powerful stream, it flayed around, not knowing If it should follow its instinct to flee or its hatred for Handling.

She kept her attack going until the Shadow stopped moving, its still enormous form covered in smoke that was slowly dissipating. Helia threw a Wind at it to help clear it faster and find Ceres, expecting the creature’s body to have disappeared by then.

Instead, she saw something else. It was still there, only, it wasn’t covered in darkness anymore. In place of the Shadow laid a majestic dragon, its whole body covered in shining scales the color of the sunset above them. Helia gasped, unsure what was happening, and locked eyes with the dragon, still on her guard.

“Thank you”, she heard an unfamiliar male voice ring inside her heart as the majestic beast closed its eyes, and disappeared into countless particles of Mana.

Ceres had ramped closer to where she was by then, cawing softly, so Helia got to work to rid him from the dark slime gnawing at him, but she was still in shock.

“Was that… A Great Spirit?”, she asked, unsure what answer she would prefer.

“It did look like one, to me”, responded Ceres cautiously, once his body had been purified. “A Fire or Earth Dragon, if I had to guess”, he added.

Helia closed her eyes, lost in thought. Had the Great Spirit been contaminated by one of the other Shadows, like the little flying ones? But then, it would have laid down as a dark lump, wouldn’t it? No, no, Spirits didn’t stop moving when they were infected, they could still struggle and defend themselves. She had never seen a Spirit fully corrupted, though, they had always been purified before that had arrived.

A terrifying idea hit her like a brick.

She didn’t even dare look at it, yet, she had to.

“Are…”, she began saying. “Are Shadows… Spirits?”

Silence fell between them. Helia held her breath, waiting for Ceres to retort, that no, that wasn’t it, no way. But he didn’t. Instead, he sighed.

“I… Sort of suspected as much”, admitted Ceres. “Purified Shadows seem turn into Mana, just like a Lesser Spirit would if their Pact was broken. But I didn’t have any proof other than my intuition, until… Now.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”, she reproached him.

“It was just a theory. I didn’t want to worry unnecessarily about me. Before you even try, no, I will not stop helping you fight Shadows”, he added. “I know you will always bring me back.”

He pushed her gently with his head, to which she responded by patting his head.

“Well, then, if no other dragons, wyverns, or sky serpents want to join us, what do you say you wake all these people up? How about a little victory song?”, he said mockingly as Helia blushed, to no one’s surprise.