Lillian stared at Terrocht in the pure white human version of Kalika. "H…how? W…why?"
Wearing Kalika's face and voice, Terrocht smiled more kindly than she spoke. "Do you think you're the only one with Cassell's gift? If you'd heeded his advice, you would've arrived before the Evil One, and maybe before me." Terrocht approached, circling Lillian. "Still, Cassell will be pleased knowing his brother Zorbian can no longer challenge his rule of this world. And it's all thanks to you."
Terrocht chuckled, watching as Lillian got to her feet, stepping back from her. "It's a good thing her blood magic can only handle one magical resonance at a time; otherwise, she would've been tricky to deal with."
Lillian, conflicted, clenched her fists, still lost.
Terrocht kept smiling. "It's fortunate that your blood magic proved very valuable."
Lillian's hands shook. "N-no…"
Stone shelves rattled around them, clay pots tumbling to the ground as the earth shook.
"As a reward, I wish to return you to our lord's cycle so you may live a normal human life, as his creation."
A blade of wind sliced halfway through Terrocht's face as Lillian jumped away.
"So you still choose to resist?"
"GIVE KALIKA BACK!!" Lillian yelled, her fist still shaking.
Terrocht's smile deepened as her face returned. "Which one?" she asked, presenting herself to Lillian. "The perfect little human I once was?"
Horns grew, along with her signature tail. "Or the disgraced woman who turned into a demon?"
She smiled more sinisterly, her eyes leering at Lillian with grim intentions. "But if you prefer, I can shift between the two as I kill you."
"No! I want my real sister, Kalika!" With a sharp gesture, she raised her hands, conjuring an army of stone spikes. "Give her back to me!!"
A barrage of spikes tore through the shop, striking Terrocht and obliterating shelves and walls. The combined force of Lillian's attack and the relentless earthquakes reduced the store to ruins.
Terrocht chuckled at the barrage. Amidst the chaos, she raised her pure white hands, expanding and stretching them toward Lillian.
Lillian flinched, then leapt out of the collapsing shop, barely slipping free of Terrocht's grasp.
She prepared a new attack, but chunks of earth and stone rained down around her, forcing Lillian to dodge the boulders.
Suddenly, from the corner of her eye, Lillian spotted a spear of fire shooting toward her from the building—it struck her shoulder, sending searing pain through her body.
She gasped and swung her arms, launching blades of wind. Shockwaves filled the air as her magic was matched attack for attack.
Frustration boiled over as she clenched her teeth and clutched her wounded shoulder.
Pain flared, and her attacks faltered as dozens of fiery spears hurtled toward her. Eyes wide, she hurled up an earth wall just in time to block the onslaught as stones thundered down around her.
She felt a stone above, then glanced up. Lillian sprang aside, but Terrocht lunged at her from the flank and launched stone spears.
She arched backward, narrowly dodging. But Terrocht stomped down on her tail, pinning her in place. Wearing a twisted grin, Terrocht conjured a new spear and drove it down at her.
The next second, Terrocht's face and arms were sliced apart, torn by desperate, wild wind magic that lashed out from Lillian.
In a burst of desperation, Lillian severed her own tail to break free, scrambling away as Terrocht unleashed a hail of elemental spears. A torrent of fire slammed into Lillian, hurling her against a massive boulder.
Drawing on the last reserves of her strength, Lillian thrust her arm forward and conjured searing fireballs, flinging them at Terrocht with furious precision.
Unfazed, Terrocht strode forward, Kalika's smug expression twisting into one of cold superiority.
Flames scorched her skin. Water crashed against her, but she didn't flinch. Even wind and earth slashed and pierced Terrocht, but wounds closed in seconds, her body healing almost instantly.
Lillian's heart sank as Terrocht kept coming, unconcerned as boulders rained down and crushed her, only to be shattered by a sweep of her immense magic.
"B-burn! I should burn him!"
Lillian forced herself upright, limping forward and wincing with each step, hurling fireball after fireball in a relentless assault against the angel.
Terrocht let out a low, mocking chuckle. "The Evil One's lifespan is long. Even now, I can't begin to calculate how many years she could live." Her smile became a sneer as she plucked one of Lillian's fireballs from the air. She paused, letting the fireball grow in her hands before lifting it high above her head.
Lillian froze, stunned, as the fireball ballooned to a size larger than a building, flames licking upward past the castle's balcony.
"With all her years, this decaying shell these wretched demons inhabit can be completely incinerated. It would be a fitting end for their kind... And one step closer to Cassell's perfect world."
Lillian's face sank, unable to look away as uncertainty gripped her heart. "It's all over… and it's all my fault…" She closed her eyes in bitter resignation. "And now she's… gone."
Suddenly, a torrent of black blood gushed from Terrocht's mouth. The deadly attack she had so carefully conjured unraveled in the wind as she doubled over, coughing and hacking, even more black blood streaming from her eyes.
Terrocht clawed at her face, feeling it begin to melt away. "Impossible. She shouldn't be able to resist me on this scale. Unless… Felim… what exactly did you make her with?" Her features twisted, then shifted back into Donovan's form with blonde hair and piercing yellow eyes. "Looks like we'll have to meet another time. The Evil One is waking."
Terrocht turned and sprouted feathery wings.
"N-No!" Lillian stumbled forward, arms outstretched in desperation. "Give her back."
"Oh?" Terrocht smirked more cruelly at Lillian, stretching out his fingers. In a single motion, he lunged his hand out to grab Lillian.
Just before he could reach her, a blast of black blood severed the angel's arm. Terrocht reeled back, and the two watched as the blob of blood transformed into Rakon.
His eyes flared a fierce orange, then he lunged at the angel, only for Terrocht to slice him to ribbons with waves of wind and a wide, focused gaze.
Terrocht's expression stunned Lillian as Rakon's blood clone reformed in an instant and grasped at the angel's neck.
"Release the woman!" Rakon shouted.
Terrocht sneered. Indignant, he sliced Rakon's arm from him and distanced himself. "The Evil One is full of surprises… This shouldn't be possible," he muttered. His eyes quickly flicked to the side. "No. I understand, Karocht," he said.
With a stern expression, Terrocht tore Rakon's hollow black blood hand off his neck.
Rakon attacked again, missing by a hair as Terrocht took to the debris-filled air. "I'm afraid I can't stay to play. I would've liked to see the extinction of your kind, but I'll make do knowing this world will soon die."
Terrocht's eyes began to glow green with a knowing smirk. Without warning, the space distorted around Terrocht, then disappeared.
Rakon stared in stunned silence as Lillian slumped to the floor. Her tail grew back, and her wounds began to heal, albeit much slower than she expected.
A pained expression laced her face as she listened to the world around them crumble away. "She's gone…"
Rakon glanced at Lillian, then at the world around them, watching as the Pit ceiling eroded in the farthest reaches of his homeland.
"Hey," Rakon said. "Are you going to sit there and mope around, or are we going to go chase after your sister?"
Lillian's eyes widened. "I don't know what you're-…" She stopped herself.
Rakon turned back to Lillian, watching as her mood soured.
"Why do you care about her so much? You planned to use her and you- And she…" Lillian stopped, unable to finish.
"So you took her memories?"
"She was still human! And you- let those women treat her worse than dirt and defile her!" Lillian held the nearby rock, sitting and weeping.
A memory flashed, of Kalika's desperate warning before departure. "She was right to tell me I shouldn't trust you. If I had stayed at her side, none of this would've happened!"
Rakon averted his gaze, letting Lillian cry in silence. The moment passed as the city streets were completely buried along with some of the homes.
"So what will it be?" Rakon asked.
Weakly, Lillian raised her head; her eyes were reddened and uncertain. "What do you mean?"
"Are you coming? Or not?"
"C-coming? How do you expect us to find that angel? He's gone. Probably to some snowy mountain."
"I sense her," Rakon stated. Bewildered, he turned to his own hand, taking note of the black blood that now made his clone as he flexed his grip. "There's still time. And trust me, I don't like this either, but I don't think I can catch up to that angel without you... But if you refuse, I'll go myself."
"You're still not making sense."
"Do I really have to spell it out to you? The only person who can catch up to that angel is the saintess from that very same god." Rakon peeked back. "That is… Unless your sister was mistaken."
"How… How long have you known?"
"Does it matter? If we let that bastard get away, Kalika will be gone forever."
Lillian tightened her lips in recognition of his words. She took a deep breath and slowly stood to her feet. She wiped her face and scowled at Rakon. "Rakon… I'll never forgive you for what you've done to my sister. I'll hate you for as long as I breathe… But for just this once, I'll work with you to save Kalika."
A clear determination washed over Lillian, prompting an amused smirk from Rakon. "Well then, let's not waste any more time."
Rakon turned into a pool of black blood and slithered around Lillian's body.
"The angel is going to the surface. How fast can you take us there?" Rakon asked.
"I-I don't know. This will be the first time I use this power to get out of the pit, but I think I can manage." Lillian sprouted her wings as Rakon directed her south.
Her eyes glowed a bright green, and in an instant, space distorted and light itself phased through her.
She peered at the first source of light and in the blink of an eye, she zipped from crystal to crystal, surfing through the light the Pit had to offer. She sensed the weight lift and speed increase as the world blurred around her, shifting from crystal to falling crystal, eventually darting to ceiling crystals.
Her eyes locked forward, deep in concentration as she followed the path of light; before she knew it, they passed halfway through the ocean-sized lake.
"The angel's nearing Falls Village! You know where that is, right!?"
"Yes!"
Lillian's eyes shifted to a distant mountainous landscape where rock rolled and crushed the trees. Suddenly, a huge chunk of the ceiling fell, decimating an entire forest. "It's everywhere!?"
"This is bad!" Lillian blurted. "How do we stop it?"
"I don't know, but that angel might know!"
"All the more reason to stop him here and now!" Lillian thought.
She continued to zip through the waves of light barreling toward the distant village in chaos.
She watched as children ran to their father as they fled toward a nearby fort of soldiers.
"
She saw two Karnal women run in with wolf pups in hand and other Karnal children at their side.
"He's flying up!" Rakon warned.
"Up! Where!?"
"There's an entrance back to the surface in that tower."
With the tower in sight, Lillian flew, slowly feeling her weight return.
She pushed past the soldiers and flew up the pit hole. Seeing a light at the end, her eyes flashed, and she sped up, soaring up and over an empty fortress.
"We're out!" Lillian scanned the landscape of rocks and plains and saw a distant battlefield of demons, undead, and humans. She then turned to the ground and watched as it began to fracture. "Up here too?"
"Focus!" Rakon barked.
Lillian straightened.
"That angel is still flying up!"
Lillian turned her attention skyward and soared like a comet. "Where is he? I can't see him."
"I got this," Rakon said. He slinked back out and lunged with his clawed hands, stretching them far into the sky. "Got you!"
Before Lillian's eyes, Terrocht in Donovan's form was unveiled. Shocked, Terrocht glared down at them.
Without warning, Rakon leapt off Lillian and, in a single movement, pulled and hurled Terrocht back into the ground, shattering the land and forming a crater.
Lillian quickly followed Rakon down, landing hard on the ground and retracting her wings. Her face stern, she watched as Terrocht slowly sat upright while the rubble fell from his shoulder. His eyes flashed with something fierce and cold.
"This was not how it was supposed to go…" Terrocht stood face to face with Lillian and Rakon. He glared back at the orange-eyed Rakon.
"You continue to defy the destiny my master has set." Slowly, his frown shifted back to a smile. "It's a good thing my master was prepared."
********
Tremors shook villages and cities in Celestine. Citizens panicked as guards forced them into their homes in haste as the quakes continued throughout their entire country. Even the pristine white castle atop the steep, tall plateau wasn't safe, as chaos erupted among the servants and guards.
"Emperor Talinidus!"
Several servants called to their missing leader, with each darting down different corridors.
Soon, a servant found the decrepit old man looking over the chaotic city fracturing before him. The servant quickly approached. "Emperor Talinidus, we must flee at once; the castle will not hold!"
"No," the Emperor said. "We will stay. Spread word that no one is to leave. God Cassell will protect us."
Frightened, the servant stepped back. "W-what?" He straightened, bumping into a large soldier with a scarred face.
"General Wise," the Emperor remarked. "Is there any news of the order I put out?"
"Yes. Everyone is in place."
The Emperor smiled.
********
From all around, and from the cliffs, an army of golden-armored soldiers stood ready, armed with pipes.
Lillian scanned the ranks, her eyes darting from soldier to soldier. "That armor…" Memories of a human general clad in similar armor surfaced, reminding her of its mystical defenses.
Her eyes widened, sensing something faint and familiar among the soldiers. Then it hit her: the pieces of stone that hung across each soldier's neck were small, yet brimming with an ancient, familiar magic. She clenched her fists, practically seeing faint blue barriers around each man as they stood at attention, prepared for war.