บท 489: All-Standing Fire
The Goddess of Winter traps me within a cage of ice and snow, the icy tendrils wrapping around my arms and legs, locking me in place. The cold bites into my skin, and I can feel the heat siphoning out of my body, leeching away my strength even with Blodwyn's Blood Nexus practically boiling our insides.
I retain my hold on her arm with a vice-like grip, refusing to let go, even as she tries to backstep and pull away. Thankfully, Flint is not all too physically imposing. She's got enough pull to kill most people I've ever met, but she's no Marshall.
Our eyes meet as she smirks knowingly. Despite her look, I settle into my plan. I have her close, and this might be my only chance to act, the only opportunity to strike back against the Goddess's chilling grip. As she tugs against my hold, I feel my muscles straining, the cold seeping deeper into my insides as the snow builds and ice writhes. But I've prepared for this—I won't let her escape without a fight.
With a grunt of effort, I release the Dzil placed beneath me, and a cascade of bones erupts from the ground. The force shatters the ice and snow, sending shards flying in every direction. The cage collapses around me, the icy tendrils snapping under the sudden pressure. The Goddess recoils in surprise, startled by the burst of energy, but I don't give her a moment to recover.
Remington's memories were right. These Gods know so little about Ether. They are native-born masters. But they do not know it.
I pull her in close, tightening my grip on her arm as I swing my lance of bone with all the force I can muster. The spike drives into her gut, a burst of cold and Ether meeting the raw impact. I can feel my own flesh tear, blood seeping from the strain of my sheer speed, but I don't care. The adrenaline surges through me, letting me ignore all pieces of the world besides her.
The impact sends a shockwave through her body, a reverberating pulse that trembles her entire frame. The icy construct she's made cracks and fractures under the force of my attack, the jagged lines spreading out like a network of frozen veins. Her icy gaze widens, her blue eyes narrowing as the spike digs deeper, finally entering her actual frozen figure.
But Flint is not one to be taken down quickly. She lets out a scream that echoes across the frozen city, a sound that feels like a blast of arctic wind. The frost around us seems to surge, the temperature dropping even further as the ice and snow respond to her anger. Yet, I hold on, my grip tight, refusing to let her escape or regain the upper hand.
I can see her soul move, but there is more than that. At this distance... I see her soul move with the touch of a Sigil, the flow of Ether perfectly set to her being as... a Concept joins in. So that's it. That's how Divinhoods work.
Knowing where this chill originates from helps little as the very sky freezes where we stand. All the moisture and gas within the atmosphere turns solid, leaving us within a maze of crystalline ice.
I push the spike in deeper, hoping to shatter her control and end her reign of winter, but she raises her head to gaze back at me. I don't want to look, and yet I cannot help but to do so.
"Clever boy. But I am no Maxemista. He is only as old as the trees. I? I am far more ancient."
Flint shatters her own arm that I hold, instantly reforming it from the frozen air around me, and it originates with a grip around my throat. Her other arm reciprocates the action, leaving my Bonespike to enter the depths of her frigid entrails.
Flint's grip tightens around my throat, her fingers like snowy tendrils constricting with a strength that seems beyond anything she's shown before. Cold seeps into my skin, an invasive chill that creeps through my veins, turning my blood into slush. Blodwyn shouts with panic as our blood slows despite his frantic mauling at it with his Dzil.
The chill is not alone, however. Darklight flows into me with the cold, acting like a hidden threat that stalks us both. No longer is it built to turn us to their side. The love has changed to a pointed spear at my heart.
Winter looks down at me with those piercing blue eyes, a cruel smile playing at the corners of her lips.
"I am older than your kind can imagine."
She hisses, her voice carrying a chill that makes my spine quiver more than the frost does.
"Older than your stories, your legends, and your fears."
Her other hand leaves my throat, rising up to my face as she stretches to take my eyes, and I can feel the ice spreading, snaking its way across my skin. My pulse slows, the world around me fading into a haze of frost and shadows.
But I'm not one to be outdone. While I leave the inside to Blodwyn, I fight Flint on the outside. Ripping the Bonespike out, I shove it into her body again, meeting identical resistance. Yet I'm not done.
With the remnants of my focus, I call for the Bone Orchard around me, and it heeds the motion. Screeches of alabaster bone and sky-blue ice are all that I can hear as I see the war just on my periphery. She's holding the bones back.
This is her domain. She wasn't lying one bit.
My body shivers involuntarily, a desperate attempt to generate warmth, but it's no use—the cold is too mighty, too overwhelming. The Bonespike still pierces Flint's gut, but her regeneration is almost instant as the first wound closes. The ice that shatters reforms in an instant, and her smile widens as if savoring the torment she's inflicting. Fuck. I don't have Lennon's firepower that can match the Divine. I just don't.
I struggle to hold on, to resist the encroaching numbness, but her grip is like iron. I need to act, to break free before the cold consumes me completely. My vision blurs, and I can barely hear anything beyond the harsh rasp of my own breath and the scratching of bone on ice. Each miniature inhale feels like inhaling shards of glass.
While my vision is covered by the encroaching transparent finger desiring my eyeballs, I reach my other hand for Lily. The little girl clamors to help me through our connection.
My hand reaches the Colt's holster and attempts to pull her out, only to be frozen in place by a sheath of ice. The azure eyes twist into a deep, dark navy as the frost spreads swiftly, creeping up my wrist and forearm like a living thing, numbing every nerve in its path. I can't move my hand—it's locked in place, a slab of frozen meat.
"No, no. This is just me and you, dear. Me and you. No help."
The playful malice sinks deeply into my body as Blodwyn tells me that our left arm is utterly frozen. The blood within won't respond to him anymore, and the chill creeps toward our heart.
My soul warns me of what will happen should the chill and the Darklight meet there. Death. Inescapable death, and not one that I will wake up from in a matter of hours.
I struggle against the cold, quickly learning an arm of solid ice is useless. Flint relishes in my suffering, but she also seems hurt by it in some way.
"I admire the spirit, I really do. But this is inevitable. Either you enter your eternal rest here, or you eventually become one of those terrible things. This is a mercy. Take it."
"Take this!"
Just as my vision is clouded by her thumb, I sense Lily emerge beside Flint, pushing away the frost with a burst of pressurized Cardinal water. Ice seethes as it melts from the heatless liquid, making contact. Meanwhile, a closed fist from a little girl strikes a God in the chin.
Flint simply twists her head to the side with broken bits of her body falling off, chuckling slightly as the ice rejoins her being. Lily backs up, fear in her eyes as she must have been expecting the waters of the Cardinal to be more effective.
"This is exactly what I mean, young man. You create things only for them to destroy. A mercy. She possesses Origin at her core. And yes... you have only ever used her to destroy, kill, and maim."
The Goddess of Winter stares down Lily as I fight against my binds with all I have, raging with a heat that simmers out my skin. Meanwhile, frost consolidates around the petite girl, who defends herself with gouts of lightless water.
Flowers bloom at the contact points only to die quickly due to the lack of heat. I can see Lily's future from here if I don't do something. Most people and creatures have no way to hurt her in this form, but I know Flint would. She's too old not to.
With all that I have, I split portions of my soul again and again, forcing Soulful Ether to bloom with a terrible intensity. Bones creak againt the ice around as some pierce through, diving straight for Flint.
Lily redoubles her effort with her water, also congealing the dark substance she uses for Petalshield around my hand as it eats through the ice.
Flint finally loosens her hold on me, stepping backward with the grace of a dancer. The slight movement allows her to avoid both of our attacks. I have the bones contort, however, and follow after her. Yet, she does a similar act, blocking them with more solidified air.
I draw Lily with my right arm while beating against the frozen left with the revolver's grip. Three smacks with all the force I can muster, and the limb shatters, falling to the ground in hundreds of pieces.
It doesn't even hurt; the area is so profoundly frozen. Shortly after, Blodwyn works to regenerate it.
I inhale several rapid breaths, seeking air to put in my lungs after being choked for so long. Flint stands at a mediocre distance away from me, just far enough that I cannot reach with a lunge.
"Why are you mortals so insistent? I know you are intelligent. Can you not see the future if you continue on this path? This... this is why I hate you all. Proven wrong, and you don't care."
"Proven wrong? Your words don't prove shit. You could be lying to me for all I know."
I refute her immediately as I close my newly regrown hand, placing Lily into it as she recedes back into the gun. She spent too much energy fighting earlier.
Flint shakes her head as he raises a hand into the air, gripping it closed before a flute of some kind fills her palm. I immediately move before she has the chance to play it, darting toward her with all the speed allowed through the chill.
Yet, I don't even get close before a screeching noise fills the air around us. The Goddess of Winter raises her eyebrows, searching our surroundings of hazy icicles before leaping to the side in a panic.
Just barely does she move far enough away that a column of radiant pitch-black fire doesn't incinerate her. The pestering laugh I know all too well echoes through the hole burned into the kingdom of winter around me.
"I lost the race! But I have a feeling you wish I didn't! Hahaha!"
Bonfire tumbles down from the sky, the man entirely constructed of flame. This is more than just his previous Power, the one that let him momentarily shift into fire. No, now, he is... he is fire. I can see organs, lungs, heart, kidneys, veins, the whole deal. Yet, they are made of roiling, shifting flames. And as Emmet Knox motivates his gaze to face Flint, they both meet as immortal enemies.
"Winter."
"Child O' Stars."
The absolute sincere hate in Bonfire's words is not something I've ever come to expect from the man. In hilarious fashion, he loathes the one being utterly opposite from him.
The man steps forward as Abraham connects to my mind, the charcoal flames quickly shifting their color. They turn from black to crimson, then tangerine, shifting into a lemon's ire before corralling back into a deep azure.
"I can't come any closer! I've been helping the Nahullo regroup! What should we do!? Can you two win!?
All the usual colors of fire transition around Bonfire's body like an aura until they vanish utterly, visible only to my supreme sight that views his very soul. And he has taken it to the absolute highest degree as his soul combusts the atmosphere around him into flame.
His Dominion is both awe-inducing to those who can see it and lackluster to those who cannot. Haashch'eezhini, a race's name that he seemed to hold fond respect for, naming it after the ancient creatures birthed of stars.
I answer Abraham while Bonfire dashes right for the Goddess, screaming out his fiery lungs. Steam clouds my vision before I move to join.
"Take them to Onyx Gate! Even if we win, there is no coming back from this! How is Ytern? I could use his help."
Bones erupt from the earth to help Bonfire as he releases infernos that hold back the frost ever so slightly. The gouts of fire are far more impressive than the subtle winds of cold, but they are not any more influential.
Still, the bits of heat allow my limbs to stretch, to move, and to flow.
Painsforge beats as I drop my focus on Bone Orchard and dive in.
"Another Dominion appeared while you were fighting her. He's losing. I'll... join him. If you can't win, Wyatt. Remember. The bomb. I gave it to the hothead over there. Good luck. See you in a little."
Abraham closes the mental connection just as I have an avalanche appear in my pupils. Stopping myself on a dime with dozens of springing Arbalests in my feet, I contort my bones around the sudden appearance, leaping up and over it.
The Haashch'eezhini barrels through all his obstructions, his invisible flames eating the cold before him while the chill attacks from behind him. Like the dunce he is, he swings his blazing fists, each strike sending sparks flying in a surge of oceanic fire. I can't worry about the man right now, though. It's enough to defend myself.
After another moment, I reach her, swinging with my Bonespike as I level Lily's barrel to her body, attempting to find a chance to strike. Flint's body reforms with each hit, the ice reconstructing as fast as it shatters, but we keep pressing, not giving her a moment to regain control.
Lily should be the turning point for this. Hopefully.
Flint's anger boils over, her icy tendrils lashing out at us. Ice forms in the air around us, jagged shards that shoot toward our bodies, seeking to impale and freeze us where we stand. I dodge and weave, avoiding the deadly projectiles while Bonfire incinerates them with a shout, but Flint's onslaught grows fiercer, the cold intensifying with each passing moment.
Realizing that her usual tactics aren't enough, Flint takes it a step further as she ceases her retreat.
Her dancing posture returns as she ducks under a swing of mine, taking Lily's barrel in one hand to point it away while spreading a palm against my chest. I feel a sudden, searing pain within my body, as if needles of ice are forming in my veins. Blood seeps from my skin, tiny crystals sprouting from the puncture wounds.
Worse yet, Blodwyn cries out in pain as the Darklight around his organ explodes, turning in crystals of ice, too, impaling our most crucial organ. With a desperate grunt, I slam my fist into the ground, using the final beat of Painsforge to knock her back.
"Are you alright?"
Quickly thereafter, my movements become sluggish without the two Dzils working in concert while Blodwyn struggles to answer.
"No. That Darklight... oww... Give me a little."
Bonfire howls with anger as his flames burn even more radiantly in my gaze, his emotion turning into raw heat. Still, Flint is ancient and wise, not at all like Maxemista's beast-like nature. So, she focuses on me, ignoring the living inferno.
"Lucky. Most need their hearts to survive. You are quite an odd one. What? Have you never experienced the true nature of Mother's Love? It can take any shape, any form, anywhere. You must only accept it."
Holding a hand to my chest, I leap backward, shaving off more pieces of my soul as I fall into relying on Bone Orchard to preserve my life. Shit. This is bad. Bonfire is doing all he can to hurt her, but she just fucking heals from all the cold around!
Shit. Shit. Shit. What can we do?
We need to get out of here. This place is her ideal battlefield.
Squinting, I watch as ribs emerge from the permafrost, only for Flint to draw power from them as they are just as cold as the rest of the atmosphere. I rub the wound as a short laugh leaves my throat.
"Mother's Love, huh? Quite insidious."
Winter itself grins at me as she smacks Bonfire to the side, a pillar of ice melting the instant after. Then, she turns into a wintry gust, heading straight for me. Like a wail of a ghost, she whispers into my ear.
"Isn't it? She'd do anything for us, and so, she does."
Hands wrap around my throat again as Emmet Knox rushes toward me. Ice and fire meet with me at their juncture, two temperatures melding at once.
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