The title is not missing or a mistake
Music for today:
Angel of the Flame
https://youtu.be/5UJc7sxPebk
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Chapter 501
Late Afternoon - Late Summer : Year 39 : Poseidon, Draconic Continent
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With a sudden jolt and whip, Hera's head fell before... "HUERK—" An eruption of flesh and blood left her mouth.
"H-HERA?!" Panic overtook me instantly. -WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED?!- Bolting over to her, blood began seeping from her eyes, and dripping from her nostrils while her body expelled her own blended flesh like her life depended on it.
*SNAP-KWOOOOM* Punching my aura through the air, I tore the fabric of space around us, isolating us for an instant just long enough to break whatever could have been reaching her.
But the moment I forced my space mana into her body, I found the damage had already been done.
Something had.. tried to rip out her reserve. Sprawling fractures littered her mana core, and the surrounding flesh had been violently shredded, like her reserve had gripped whatever it could in a fighting breath to hold on, only to shred her flesh. -What the hell?!-
Since we had sat down, I watched the surrounding space more carefully than anything else I ever had... Nothing was to escape my eyes...
And yet right before me, Hera nearly had her heart ripped out.
"HERA!" Yelling as I caught her head, pushing my aura through her skull to find her brain reduced to an incoherent blend of flesh, I simply choked. "A-ARE YOU ALRIGHT?!"
But she couldn't think straight enough to reply.
Her brain had dissolved itself—liquifying what remained of her original neural pathways and replacing them with divinity in a moment of desperation...
As if desperate to comprehend something... "HUUUERK—"
-What the fuck did she see for her brain to blend itself like that..?!- It was completely beyond anything I thought possible. "B-Breathe, Hera!" -What the hell happened to her?!-
But the moment I repeated that question, my eyes moved past her.. toward her tail.. and I saw it. -What the...-
Towards its tip, her scales were molten and dripping—the scales along her tail and spine glistening with a level of mana far beyond just toxic. -Something forced its mana into her...- At a level I never would have missed. -So how the hell did I miss it?!-
Snapping my eyes around, shooting my gaze through the walls, I looked for anything with a presence, whether it was the size of a dragon or atom.
But...
There was nothing...
No presence.. no echo.. no voice.
-Another thing wants to hide from me?!- *snap-KWAWOOOOM* My mana simply exploded—the walls fracturing as my aura chewed through it—my divinity spinning as time twisted and dilated.
But that anger suffocated the moment Hera collapsed...
"H..HERA!" *WOOM-THUMP* Darting beneath her, I used everything I had just to keep her up.. my wings, body, and aura...
But her body was completely limp.. and feeling her slump over me like a lifeless carcass made the world freeze.
In that breath, all semblance of panic vanished with a survival-driven sharpness—my senses dulled, and all thoughts turned subconscious and linear.
As if it was my life on the line, I moved my aura through Hera like a machine, taking over many of her body's suddenly idle functions praying to find a way to restart the engine.
But that was when I found it. -Her spinal cord...- It had been completely crystallized with mana—broken and fractured in countless places throughout her spinal column...
And after all her remaining divinity had been forced into her brain, she had nothing to replace it with.
Her entire nervous system was dead.. and with the level of mana destroying it, there was no healing it...
Or so I thought...
*Snap-WOOOM* Suddenly spinning up a mass of divinity that nearly rivaled mine, Hera's presence exploded—tension returning to her muscles as her claws snapped into the ground, and pushed.
Her muscles tore, tendons frayed, and bones strained with an inefficient mess of spread out force.. but... -She's.. moving..?-
Feeling her push herself off me, I simply froze. She was using her mana to forcefully move her body—manually, without a nervous system... It was crude, and damaging her body, but.. that wasn't what made me freeze.
"H..Hera..?" Even as she stood, her eyes remained closed—her senses clearly still cut off... Except for one... "~Where did you get that divinity...~" My voice left my chest cold. She shouldn't have had any divinity left.. yet somehow she seemed to have an incredible surplus.
Though only long enough to get out one single word... "~Please...~" The moment she muttered it, her divinity slowed, her pace of time lost its dilation, and her movements slowed.
All before gripping me with a desperate grasp, as if mustering every drop of strength she still had just to stay conscious before...
*Snap...* Feeling a frigid, piercing sharpness, she dug her claws into me—tearing straight through the scales—and her maw closed on the back of my neck.
I could have resisted.. I could have overpowered her and forced her off me.. but instead, I just.. took it. I assumed it was just her fighting to hold on, and didn't want to make it any harder than it already was.
That was at least until I felt that horrific, crawling, infectious spread of divinity sinking into me through her teeth and claws like a spreading fungus.
The moment I noticed it, my instincts took over and getting her off me became something for survival.
But it was too late. Spreading through my body faster than time itself, that foreign divinity wrapped around mine, and my consciousness snapped and moved...
Finding itself.. somewhere foreign...
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- Hera ~
*Woom* "V-VASILIAS!" Suddenly waking with a scream as I watched my body sink it's teeth into Vasilias completely without my control, I found myself sat atop a small altar surrounded by nature, greenery, and a colossal black-furred figure...
My form almost appeared human, yet just before me, a gargantuan fenrir—curled up and resting—held my attention.
"Vasilias..." When it spoke, the world itself seemed to bend around it, yet its tone was warmer and more gentle than nearly any I knew. "That's quite a good name." Slowly shifting his posture, the world seemed to move to make way for him—letting him raise his head, never giving me a chance to see his eyes as he looked out at the horizon.. and the sun setting beyond it.
Looking at his back, warmth and comfort seeped through me like I had never known it to, but beneath it all, something else echoed from the body I seemed to possess...
A faint sadness...
I had no physical form. No matter what happened, the connection I seemed to reach toward that fenrir would never reach him... So my body pulled it back.
But watching it happen.. killed me.
"Do you ever.. wonder..?"
Lifting its eyes, my body watched the fenrir's fur rustle in the steady winds it couldn't feel while my chest clenched with regret I couldn't yet source.
Before my form, not I, spoke with my voice. "~I do...~" My tone was so gentle it made my chest feel like it was splitting... Like deep down, I was screaming for it to stop.
But I could only watch... "If.. I made you a body... Would you take it..?"
My mind screamed.. but my body didn't respond. "~No...~" Regret so deep it carved canyons into my soul instantly dug through me. -Please...- I begged.. but I had no control... "I wouldn't..."
It.. hurt... Watching a form I had never known speak those words to a being I didn't recognize sent a pain beyond anything I had ever known through me.
"I.. see..." Hearing his voice fall felt like a dull blade tearing itself through my flesh slower than even the most psychotic torturer would dare.. and watching him rest his head once more only made it worsen.
-Stop... PLEASE STOP!- But my thoughts couldn't reach my body. "~I.. only want to protect Delphi's children until my time comes...~"
"Hah..." Letting out a dreadfully heavy, almost forced scoff, the fenrir's breathing practically ceased—the air around him growing still as his presence seemed to empty. "You..." But he never finished his words.
"~I'm helpless, I know.~" I spoke so innocently it was deadly. -S..Stop talking... Please.. stop talking...- But my body seemed to only do whatever made the pain worse... "~I hope you can forgive me... I cannot stand giving you an impossible mission.~" From my body I felt.. misplaced mercy...
The fenrir's ears perked up with a twitch almost instantly. "You know nothing is impossible for me."
It was the truth.. even in the deepest reaches of my soul—the farthest depths of my subconscious—I knew that fact.
Yet my body within that vision refused it. "~No... Even for you.. some things are out of reach...~"
*Creaaak* The fenrir's teeth creaked as they nearly cracked from the clench of his jaw. He was so furious he had to fight with everything he had to stay silent.. to not let it show...
Yet even when it was so obvious, the one in control of my body ignored it. "~You have far a far greater mission. I know it.~" It killed me. "~Don't let yourself fall short of the stars because you distracted yourself with me...~"
It spoke so innocently.. so naively it was sickening...
But I didn't understand why until 'he' spoke...
"Hera..."
Hearing my name from him, what remained of my ignorantly confused consciousness scattered.. and an overwhelming desire to run.. curl into a ball and plug my ears settled over me...
But I was forced to watch.
To remember... "I've already been to the stars... I walked through them for an eternity..."
To watch as Nott stood.. and fragments of shattered memories returned with the caress of the emptiness in his voice...
"The only reason I am here is because I found the one thing I was searching through them for..."
The more I remembered.. the more I hated it... The more I dreaded every coming moment...
...Until.. he finally turned around.. and those familiar, amethyst pupils were laid on me. "If that is what you truly wish, I'll try to respect it... Just know.. even if it's your greatest desire, I will never touch the stars again..." *snap-Vwoom*
Watching him vanishing with a single, space-bending step, the world seemed to finally release its breath with a wash of breeze.
With the set of the sun, stars had overtaken the night sky.. but the world.. was restless...
So restless it spoke... "~You...~" Using my own voice... "~...are a fool.~"
"~I know.~" My body replied instantly, as if familiar.. moving its gaze to the stars almost carelessly. "~But so is he...~" It spoke with an arrogance that made the deepest reaches of my soul crawl.
An arrogance so deep, the world itself clenched it's teeth. "~No. A fool would be someone who offers to grant a wish he cannot fulfill.~"
"~A fool is someone who believes nothing is impossible.~" My body spoke with a jarringly snarky snap.
And the atmosphere itself tensed in response.. only easing a moment later as if finding a breath of restraint. "~You truly must have lost everything...~" For a breath, my cries almost seemed to echo through that other voice. "~You were created for that moment... You only exist because I needed him to hear you say yes.~" That voice was containing its anger.. but there was hardly a single strand left holding it together...
One final, fraying thread my body was slashing at. "~I was created to fulfill your wish. To protect the children who walk your-~"
"~YET YOU HAVE TAKEN THAT WISH AS SOMETHING SO SIMPLE!~" With her cry, the world quaked—kingdoms fell, forests rocked, mountains formed, and volcanos erupted—the connection carrying that voice instantly growing cold and distant. "~You've become an arrogant child, Hera.~"
My mind snapped back instantly.. a wave of realization flowing as that voice stirred clarity into my consciousness—recollecting memories, scattered and fragmented, of a goddess from ancient times.. long before I knew the touch of flesh.
"~You are going to die.~" This wasn't just any vision... It was a memory...
My memory...
From a life I had forced myself to forget before being born with scales... "~When the day comes, you will remember.. and you will writhe in your regret..."
Memory of a nightmare of my own orchestration.
Memory of my greatest mistake.. and my greatest regret... "~That's okay...~"
The day I doomed not only myself, the goddess, Hera.. but the day I doomed my very reasons for existence...
Nott.. Vasilias...
Gaia.. Delphi...
And a being even greater...
"~I will soon lose the strength to hold together this final fragment.. and you will rot for an eternity knowing it was you're fault.~" As if biting her tongue once more, the world's turmoil settled with a forceful grip. "~I can only pray Vasilias succeeds in the gamble he is yet to take.. and finds a solution I cannot...~"
My form within the memory tensed in that instant. Questioning why that name had reappeared...
But Delphi wasn't speaking to the Hera present within that memory...
She was speaking to me. "~Hera...~" The dragoness, "~Pray...~" The Hera finally seeing a glimpse of what she had done... "~Pray as hard as you can that he brings you to a future I cannot see...~"
And what I had ruined.
"~Because there are none where he forgives you.. and none where you don't kill him while he sees the truth.~"
Feeling the memory begin to fade as my consciousness was forcefully expelled from the memory, I wanted to run and hide.. to rot in silence and loneliness rather than return to reality.
But like an octopus dragging its prey to the bottom of the ocean.. I was forced back into the body that was the result of my own decision...
...The body that was presently tasting the blood of the very being I owed it all to.. using its divinity to show him the truth...
To show him where his life's efforts became futile.. and meaningless...
And to trap me in a prison of understanding that it was all my fault.
That this world's hope.. its blood.. was dripping from my maw.
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