"Niva… is that you!?" said the yeti with a rough and tired voice, as her wild eyes slowly returned to normal.
"Yes, it's me. We are home, at the Winged Mountain. There are no more Watchers, no more Void monsters… The war is over… for nine thousand years."
"Alex, this is Yillda, the queen of the yetis."
(Of course… nothing unusual. A yeti queen sounds good too), thought Alex.
"Yillda, this is Alex. You'll be surprised by him in the future."
With a big smile, like an innocent child, Alex exclaimed:
"Wow! You're super strong and really beautiful, big sister yeti!"
"Ehm… you're cute too, and you smell really good… you remind me of someone… don't you, Niva?"
"No way! If you're thinking about King Al, that's impossible. Even if he was average in height, he wasn't as small as Alex."
Unbeknownst to Yillda and Alex, Anivia didn't want Alex's legendary identity to be revealed.
"Ohh, you're right, big sister," Yillda accepted without asking more questions.
"How many times do I have to tell you, I'm not your sister! You're lucky I'm not like Volibeara!!"
Hearing that name, Yillda recalled the overwhelming strength of the electric she-bear.
Then Anivia explained the situation to Yillda: the end of the war, its consequences, the fate of the yetis. They even mentioned a certain King of Freljord… and every time Anivia spoke of him, she glanced at Alex, only deepening his confusion.
(King of Freljord… who is he? What's his connection to me? Does he really look that much like me? This is all so confusing…)
Then Alex remembered what Nouna once told him: "Alex, Willa is the last of her kind."
"Anivia… why doesn't Willa look like the temple yetis, or Yillda, except for the fact that they're the only females of their race?"
"It's a long story…" (Author: bullshit no jutsu).
"Anivia! A yeti was born? That's impossible! The rune magic disappeared with the last fragment—the same fragment that turned me into a demi-goddess! And all yetis are born asexual, even me before my fusion with the fragment!"
"It's true. As you say, yetis have no gender; they're magical beings. The birth of a yeti comes from a magical reaction caused by the world runes. Here, it was a fragment of the Rune of Strength. But with the corruption of the Void, rune magic weakened. To survive, the fragment had to merge with the strongest yeti: Yillda," Anivia explained with a solemn tone.
"And it was so hard to survive the absorption of the fragment…" Yillda admitted, remembering the past.
"But it transformed me to the level of a young demi-goddess. My feminine side came from my desire to resemble the three demi-goddess sisters of Freljord. That day, I became the queen of the yetis." She smiled broadly.
"That's why you didn't need my blessing like the other yetis."
"Anivia, you had given half of your power to my people. If I am the yeti queen, then you are our goddess."
"Goddess, you say…? I couldn't protect anything, despite the help of my sisters, of you, of everyone. In the end, it was the yetis—your family!—who accomplished what I couldn't."
(Oh come on, more drama!) thought Alex.
"You couldn't! You were the only one to fulfill his wish."
(Well, it's not a 'goodbye,' just a 'see you later.' Niva, don't sacrifice yourself… Me and the yetis are enough! Don't forget what I told you yesterday… Oh, and I almost forgot, I made some toys for you and the girls, hehehe…!!!)
Remembering the last words of Freljord's savior, Anivia composed herself and resumed her story.
"One of his wishes was tied to Willa."
"I had to watch over a certain place, eight thousand years after the war. And just as he said, inside an ice cave, rune magic began to gather. I realized it was the remaining power of the yetis—my blessing. He had asked me to place a crystal that contained a part of his magical essence. The rune magic was drawn to that crystal… and the mixture of the two essences created a small white creature that I named Willa.
As he asked me, I blessed her and gave her a part of my body, which she herself would one day give to the pure-hearted chosen one: Nouna."
Alex finally understood Willa's uniqueness.
"So she has the powers of King Al and of the yetis—which are yours. Everything needed to seal the rift if it ever reopens," Yillda concluded.
"But at what cost! If someone else discovers it… like a certain witch who already made a terrible mistake once, she could repeat it, believing once again it's the only solution!" said Anivia gravely.
The two women stopped talking and looked straight at Alex.
(This is way too specific… Don't look at me like that. You know very well it's going to happen now, just because you said it… This isn't funny.)
Both women, at the same time: "Oh, shit!"
An explosion thundered, followed by an earthquake and the tearing sound of magical space.
"I can feel spatial disturbances… someone has opened a massive portal inside the temple. We need to return quickly," said Anivia.
"Yillda, take Alex with you. I'll return straight to my main body to help the girls if there's danger." With that, Anivia dispersed into shards of ice.
Yillda immediately showed her mountaineering skills, leaping from rock to rock, dodging falling debris. She was completely in her element—doing all this with just one hand, the other holding Alex tightly.
Despite his protests—claiming he could climb on his own, even if more slowly—Alex couldn't help but enjoy the soft sensation of her grip. He was trapped between her muscular arm and her large, plump breasts.
Alex truly seemed to have a gift: always traveling in the most comfortable conditions a man could imagine.
Thanks to Yillda's speed, they soon reached the temple platform.
In front of them, the door was destroyed. They rushed into the main hall, where the sounds of battle echoed loudly.
The moment they entered, a gigantic explosion of blue-green energy burst forth…