"All right. Leave it to me."
Thalamik looked at the beast above.
The three-headed chimera floated over the burning forest with its wings made of blades. Black armor with crimson light running through the gaps like veins. It didn't stop for one bit, its heads breathing fire in all directions. Its tail swung down and crushed a hill for no explainable reason.
A girl sent by the Demon King. A black ring. An Alterity. And she defeated Oberon.
Thalamik would have flown straight up and swung at it with everything he had. That was how he had killed Ose. But he had seen this kind of circular mechanism before. It was above Lake Malawi, against Suiko.
"I'm going." He did not look back at her, manifesting Blastar's boots before jumping into the sky.
Momoka wiped her tears with the back of her hand. "Stay safe, Master!"
As Thalamik went up into the sky, he remembered a sight he had seen before in the Artifact War. Before that incident, a sight like that would have made his chest hurt and made him lose his composure. Yet his focus here wasn't to help the Fey. It was to give Momoka what he had promised her and what she rightfully deserved.
He flew in a wide circle around the Beast, staying far away, and watched.
FWOOOOSH!!!
The right head breathed a river of fire into a part of the forest that was already burning.
CRASH!!!
Its tail came down and smashed a row of oaks where nobody was standing.
BZZZT!!!
Red lightning jumped from its wings and struck the river, then a rock, then the empty sky.
There was no pattern whatsoever. This was just like a child wrecking his toys.
Or a beast running wild.
FWOOOOOSH!!!
A river of fire shot across the sky. Thalamik did not block it. He dropped out of its way and let it pass above him.
He charged his blade with only a small amount of magical energy.
"Darkside: Blade."
SLASH!
The blue wave with black sparks flew up and struck the Beast's right wing.
KLANG!!!
A long cut opened across the black armor. Crimson light leaked from it like blood.
CRANG!!!
One of the black rings on the wing shattered into pieces. At the same moment, the cut on the armor closed as if it had never been there.
Thalamik clicked his tongue.
The same as Suiko's Black Rings. They break in place of the body.
He counted the round mechanisms on its wings, its necks, and its tail. He stopped counting at forty.
"Forty extra lives... Crazy creature." He smirked, looking at the beast.
"GRUAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!" The middle head roared. One of the mechanisms on its chest spun, and something black shot out of it.
A ring.
TUNG~
Thalamik was already gone. The black ring passed through his afterimage and closed around a burning oak behind him. "Amateur," he said, smiling.
Even after the attack, the Beast did not chase him. The middle head had already turned away and was breathing fire at an empty hill. To that thing, he was no different from the hill.
In a sense, the beast could come down here and try to crush me too. So why didn't it?
Thalamik flew back down under the smoke and landed on the dry riverbank.
He looked at the flames around him.
***
Momoka watched her Master disappear toward the beast. In the Artifact War, he had always been beside her. This time, he hadn't given her any plan. Everything was up to her. She turned to the Fey King with a determined expression. "King Oberon. Are there any of your people left?"
Oberon touched his neck where the blade had been. "The eastern boundary. I believe they ran as far as the Alterity allowed them to. Many of them were already burned when they fled."
"Can you walk better now?"
"I can."
"Take me there."
Oberon's one good eye widened, and he gave a suspicious smile. "Your Master had his sword on my throat a moment ago. And you would still go with me?"
"I didn't say I trust you," Momoka said, her eyes glaring at the king with bloodlust. "I want to save them. It doesn't mean that I trust you or that I'm willing to let you off the hook."
"Touché, Miss Momoka. This way," Oberon replied, pointing in the eastern direction. His voice was still weak.
***
At the eastern edge of the forest, the Fey were pressed against something that could not be seen. Elves were hitting the boundary with their fists. Pixies flew into it and bounced back like moths against a window. Behind them, the fire was coming closer, one tree at a time.
And on the ground lay the ones who could no longer stand.
A dryad with half of her bark-like skin turned black.
A satyr holding what was left of his leg. Pixies whose wings had curled up like dry leaves.
Elven children who had stopped crying because they no longer had the strength to.
Momoka's hands began to shake.
"Who is that?!" an elven soldier shouted, pointing his spear at her. "A Demi-Human? Why is a Demi-Human here?!"
"Lower your weapon!" Oberon said.
"Y-Your Majesty?! Your arm! Your arm was—"
"She is the one who gave it back to me." Oberon lifted his right hand so that everyone could see it. "She can help us all. Trust in me and do as she says."
The soldier slowly lowered his spear.
Momoka took a deep breath. She pressed her palms together. She conjured up clones of herself, a trick she had learned from Nanaya.
POP! POP! POP! POP!
One Momoka became ten. Ten became fifty.
"Bring everyone who can't walk to the middle! Children first! Lay them close together!"
"Yes!" fifty voices answered, and they started running.
One lifted the satyr onto her back. One gathered pixies in both arms. One knelt in front of the dryad and said, "It's okay. I've got you." The real Momoka knelt beside an elven man with burns all over his chest. He looked at her with fear in his eyes. He had long ears and pale hair.
A Fey.
With his last breath, he told me. It was a Fey.
Suddenly, flashbacks appeared in her mind of the last thing Momoka's fiancé had said.
Her fingers stopped above the man's chest.
What if it was this one? What if the hands she was about to save were the same hands that had made that hole in Konoe's stomach? That person could be anyone here.
Then something small pulled at her tail.
Momoka looked down with solemn eyes.
A pixie child, no bigger than her hand, was holding on to her fur with both arms. One of its wings was gone.
"It hurts..." the child said. "Miss fox... it hurts..."
Momoka closed her eyes.
Even so.
She opened them and picked the child up gently.
"It will stop hurting soon. I promise."
She looked at the rows of the wounded. More than two hundred. If she healed them the way she had healed Oberon, piece by piece, bone by bone, most of them would be dead before she finished the first row.
Reviewing the situation in her mind, she remembered. She still had all of her mana.
So this is why, Master.
"King Oberon. I need ten minutes. Please don't let the fire reach me."
Oberon did not ask why. "All right, I've got you. I'll use your master's technique." He stepped in front of her and raised his new right hand. "Push." A pulse of magical energy expanded outward from Oberon's body. The surrounding flames were pushed away once again.
"For the record, I can use a spell I have seen once. Thanks to your master, we can help the people here."
Momoka had many questions in her mind, but she decided to ignore them for the greater good of the Fey.
"My mana hasn't regenerated completely. But ten minutes? I swear you will have them," he said.
Momoka sat down in the middle of the wounded, crossed her legs, and closed her eyes.
BOOOM!!!
Somewhere in the other regions of the river of trees, a river of fire fell from the sky, and the ground shook. The Fey people screamed. It hadn't been targeting them. But the next one might hit them.
In her mind, Momoka remembered her Master's words.
"Leave it to me."
Momoka did not open her eyes and took a deep breath. "I trust you, Master."
***
Looking at the flames, Thalamik started with water once again. The first time, he had only thrown a handful. This time, he gathered magical energy in both palms until a ball of water as large as a house floated above him.
He threw it at the nearest burning oak.
SPLAAASH!!!
The water fell through the flames, hit the trunk, and ran down into the dirt.
No hiss. No steam. The fire had not even flickered.
"Just like before."
But that was the strange part.
Thalamik turned and looked at what was left of the river. It was still boiling. White steam was still rising from it, the same as when Oberon had been lying there.
This fire can boil a whole river. So why didn't it boil my water?
The river was here before the fire. It belongs to this place. My water came from me.
Does the fire only touch what belongs to this place?
He remembered something else.
When he had used Push to make a safe space for Oberon, the flames had moved away. And after that, they had stayed away. There had been dry grass under their feet the whole time, and not one flame had come back for it.
Fire does not behave like that. Fire goes wherever there is something to burn.
CRASH!!!
The Beast's tail came down two hundred meters to his left.
"So noisy." Thalamik charged up his energy once more and slashed another wave of energy at the creature, and the black rings on its body popped. The creature looked around itself, but it couldn't find Thalamik in the sea of burning trees, so it went back to what it was doing.
"Mana Field." He spread his field and reached into the burning oak with it. "Hold."
He boxed a piece of flame from a burning branch using his Mana Field. It kept burning inside his field with nothing under it.
I can hold it? I do see magical energy inside this flame, like particles. It burns without anything to burn.
Thalamik picked up a dead leaf from the ground. It was brown, dry, and cracked. The kind of leaf that should catch fire from a single spark.
He dropped it into the flame.
The leaf fell through and landed on the ground.
It was not even warm.
I see. It doesn't burn things the way a normal flame would.
He looked around the forest one more time. The great oaks were burning. The villages woven into the trees were burning. The Fey were burning. He suddenly noticed that below a tree near him, there were two elves.
The first one was totally dead. His whole body was burnt black, and one of his arms was still stretched out toward the other.
The second one was lying on his back with flames crawling all over his chest, his arms, and his face. But somehow, he was breathing.
Thalamik crouched beside him and said, "Push." As the fire was pushed aside, leaving only his boots with fire on them, he noticed that there was a bump on the elf's head and a broken branch next to it.
Two elves. One burned to death, and one didn't. One of them is dead. The other is sleeping.
After a few seconds, he made up his mind. With force, he slapped the elf's cheek.
PAK!
"Wake up."
The elf's eyes opened slowly. He looked at Thalamik. Then he looked down at his own foot and saw the flames.
"AAAAAAAAAHHH!!!"
FSSSH!
His foot began to burn as he screamed in pain. The burns spread to his other foot, while the remaining flames were pushed back by Thalamik's Mana Field.
Thalamik watched before carefully striking the back of the elf's neck.
THUD!
The elf went limp.
The burns slowly stopped spreading.
"Cheap illusions."
He stood up and wiped his hand on his coat. The elf was groaning in his sleep. Thalamik did not look at him again. With a heavy breath, he said, "Black. Take him to where Momoka is." A shadowy figure emerged from the ground picked up the elf and walked toward the eastern side.
***
It was then that the night sky turned blue.
"Flow... mana of the living..."
Momoka opened her eyes and stood up.
She began to dance slowly among the wounded. Her dark blue dress fluttered. Blue magical energy followed her hands like ribbons.
"Bring blessings to those worthy of it..."
Her fox tail began to glow. The Fey who were still awake lifted their heads. The soldier who had pointed his spear at her stood frozen with his mouth open.
"From here on out..."
"Instead of bane, become my boon."
Blue flaming orbs appeared around her. They circled her once, twice, then floated upward and merged into one. It grew bigger than the trees. It grew until the air around it began to bend.
Momoka stopped her dance and clapped her hands together once.
"Rain of Blessings: Extra Life!"
SPLASH!
The orb burst, and it began to rain.
It rained on the wounded. Droplets of the rain hit everyone who was at the eastern boundary.
Wherever the blue drops fell, black skin turned lively and whole. The satyr's leg grew back, bone first, then flesh, then fur. The dryad's bark became smooth again. And on the back of the pixie child in Momoka's hands, a new wing opened, clear and shining, as if it had never been lost.
"My leg... I have my leg!"
"Mother! Look! It doesn't hurt anymore!"
The pixie child flew a clumsy circle around Momoka's head and then hugged her nose. "Thank you, Miss Fox!"
Momoka forced a smile. She had spent a considerable amount of mana performing that spell. Usually, she used the spare mana her Master gave her. But this time, she had used her own.
"Everyone, don't get ahead of yourselves, okay? This spell heals your body. But it won't replenish your mana."
Near the edge, an old elven woman was shaking a man who lay still. The blue rain was falling on him too. His burns were not closing.
Momoka bit her lip.
Extra Life could close a fatal wound. It could grow back an arm or a leg. But it could not call back someone who was already gone. That man had died sometime during those ten minutes.
I'm sorry. I was too slow.
Oberon lowered his hand, canceling the spell he had created. He looked at his people, standing up one after another, and then at the fox girl sitting among them. Then the King of Fey went down on one knee in front of her, breathing heavily.
"My people killed the one you loved," he said quietly. "And you still did this. I appreciate it."
Momoka did not answer right away.
"I haven't forgiven anything," she said. "When this is over, I will still ask you for a name."
"...And I promise my utmost cooperation. But maybe the truth won't satisfy you at all."
She nodded. "Whatever you say, King." Then she looked up.
The rain was falling on the burning trees too, but not a single flame had gone out.
***
I felt a great amount of mana spent in the atmosphere.
She used a great amount of mana for that. But that is also the perfect route I would've taken.
But to think that this fire was a mere illusion.
Momoka's Fiery Heaven burned whatever it hit.
As a rule, fire spells never pick and choose.
The only thing that could do this was an Alterity rule. A rule that made the fire somehow sustain itself. Basic physics wouldn't matter anymore, since it was a rule. But an advantageous rule can't exist without a drawback.
From my experiment, I knew that it responded to the mind. Therefore, all of this was sustained by manipulation of the target's perspective. Just like how Raum fed on fear, this one makes people burn themselves with it. Seeing a sea of trees burning creates the perception of an eternal blazing hell. Once you start believing the fire will burn you, it will burn eternally.
I walked to a nearby burning oak tree and let go of my Mana Field. I unequipped every piece of armor I was wearing. I stretched my hand forward, closer to the flame, without fear or a care in the world.
The heat on my hand felt real, so I closed my eyes. "There is no fire here," I said, pushing my hand into the gulf of fire before me. I felt my magical energy going haywire. The crackling sounds near me disturbed my focus, and I slowly felt the burning once more. Taking a deep breath, I focused my mind again, and finally, the pain disappeared.
Opening my eyes, I looked at the flame above my palm. I pulled my hand back and crushed the flame with my bare hand, and it disappeared like particles of magical energy.
"I assume you are feeding then?" I stared at the beast once more.