Godslayer Lysette: Chapter 186

Chapter 186: The Mountainous Path

Lysette and Serrena spent the rest of the night in a session of joint Cultivation, with a primary focus on empowering the six humans traveling among them.  Serrena worked with the group collectively, while Lysette spent most of her evening focusing on repairing Amalia’s Spark further.  She infused it with Essence little by little, searching for any signs either of damage or malignant growth.

Seeing neither, Lysette continued slowly, ensuring that the bond with Mirae’s graft remained solid and well formed, even as both grew together.  A part of her worried that Mirae’s Ivy might grow stronger and faster, spreading like kudzu to overwhelm and supplant Amalia’s native Fern.  But those fears appeared ill-founded.  Both were growing in tandem, and if anything, Amalia’s Fern was growing around and over the Ivy substrate.

One thing Lysette found a bit odd was that, out in the middle of nowhere, the density of ambient Essence was somewhat lower than it was in Domark.  Based on her previous understanding, it seemed as though it should be denser far away from other Cultivators.  That left two possibilities.  First, and more likely, that Domark was built into an Essence nexus.  But the more troubling possibility— that some ancient Cultivator or Cultivation beast was lurking and absorbing Essence from the area— couldn’t be dismissed either.

The second day of travels proceeded more quickly than the first.  Part of this was that Amalia was no longer quite as much of a drag on their overall pace.  Lysette continued to carry her for the most part, but every couple of hours, she powered on under her own strength.  Her stamina grew with each burst, pushing on a few minutes longer each time, and her confidence continued to blossom alongside.

Shortly before noon, the group broke for lunch, tolerating a meal of salted meat and crackers supplemented by a few native berries.  Despite not needing to eat, Lysette and Serrena both forced the food down right alongside the others in a display of camaraderie.  The berries were tasty enough, ripe and sweet, but the crackers had little taste and the meat was little tastier than extra-salty wood chips.  Serrena in particular looked like she was holding back the need to hurl, and the unspoken understanding between the two demigoddesses was clear: no blessings for whomever made these travesties which they attempted to pass off as food.

The wind began to whip up after lunch as they neared the mountains, and the handful of clouds that had floated high overhead darkened and multiplied manifold.  As they began their ascent, the drizzle started.  Kiarra groaned as she grabbed a heavier jacket out of her dimensional storage charm and put it on.  Gerald coated himself in a suit of crystal and ore, while Lilia conjured a bubble of water which hovered just off her body.

A gust of wind from down the mountains bellowed down toward the group, but it stopped just as abruptly when Rayleigh raised a single hand in the air.  The rains stopped just as suddenly, though, when Lysette looked again, they were sliding off some thin air barrier and landing a few feet to the side.

Rayleigh grinned.  “A barrier of solidified air that repels water, earth, and even lightning.  Too many people think Wind Cultivation is all about flying, dodging, and running away while lobbing attacks from a distance.  But it’s quite a bit more useful than it appears at first glance.”

“I’m sure it’d be useful while flying at high altitudes if you can keep a bubble of higher-pressure, warmer air around yourself as well.”

“Impressive, Lyse.  I didn’t think you were so studious as to know about that.”

Lysette sprouted her wings for a few seconds before dissipating them.

“Of course you can fly.  Goddess things.”  She turned to Serrena.  “You too?”

Serrena smiled.

“I don’t really care either way.”  Rayleigh expanded her air bubble, even as a bit of sweat formed on her forehead.  “I just have to work that much harder to make up for all the stupid and ridiculous advantages you two get as goddesses.”

“Did I tell you what I was the goddess of?” Serrena asked.

“Stubbornness?  Hardheadedness?  Annoyance?  Those all three sound just like what the oh-so-great Serrena Raesh would be all about.”

“Ambition.  Self-Improvement, striving for more, never being satisfied with where you are.  So I mean this with all due sincerity and I hope you take it the way I intend.  But if you want to push yourself like that and strive to reach where I am and then surpass me, then I want you to commit to that.”

“Serrena, if you’re forming a pact with her, I’m okay with it.  And I’ll let Mirae know when we make it to Ciricu and ensure that things are smoothed over with them as well.”

“Well, it seems Miss Barret is learning.  And, also, thank you, Lyse.”

“Commit to it?” Rayleigh asked.

“Redouble your focus and desire to improve yourself, to be the best you can be as a person, as a Cultivator, as a fighter, or in whatever other endeavors you pursue.  Swear to yourself and to me that your statement from before reflects your true intentions, and let our Essence bind us both in pursuit of that goal.”

“Those are some big words, Serrena.  But you know what?”  Rayleigh extended her hand.  “I said I’ll do what I have to in order to keep up with, then surpass you.  And if that means I have to swallow my pride and accept your help, then I won’t like it, but I’ll do it.”

As the two of them continued their conversation, sealing their pact with a handshake and an accompanying bond of exchanged Essence, Lysette sent a message to Amalia.

“How are you holding up?” Lysette asked.  “Are you getting cold or hungry?”

“I’m a little hungry, but I’ll be fine waiting until we break for dinner in a couple of hours.  And I don’t feel cold at all.  Even though I feel like I should be, I don’t feel anything that suggests that the temperature is bothering me at all.”

Lysette reached into her Dimensional Storage charm and pulled out a small handful of blueberries and raspberries, handing some to Amalia and eating a pair of each for herself.

“I know you want to prove yourself.  I know you don’t want to be seen as the girl slowing us all down, but I want you to make sure that you’re taking care of yourself.  We talked about how I don’t want my friends to die, and in order to minimize the chances of that happening, I need you to promise that you’ll take care of yourself.”

“I– I–”

“Amalia, you leapt into the fray without regard for your life and nearly sacrificed yourself to save the life of the one I love.  For that, I owe you a debt I can’t hope to repay.  This is the absolute least I can do for you.  If anything, I wish I could do a lot more than just heal you and thank you over and over again.”

“Will you take me flying again?”

“You want to go flying again?”  Lysette looked perplexed.

“When you took me flying, I got to see the world from your perspective.  The grandness and beauty of Aimarion, the serenity that comes from seeing the world as a natural whole, a bigger picture than I can see from the ground or even from Domark.  I want to see the world again from that perspective one day.”

“You’ll have to get in line with all the kids.”

“The kids?”

“The kids who live in Ciricu.  Over a hundred of them.  And they all loved flying just as much.”

“What kind of a town is Ciricu?”

“It’s a small, quiet town just north of the mountains.  The people are kind, warm, and welcoming.  A people who haven’t been treated well by their nominal ruler.  A people worthy of my protection.”

“I can’t wait to meet everyone.”

“Nor can I wait for all of you to meet them as well.”

The ground rumbled and shook.  The group paused.  Serrena’s fists erupted in flame.  Lysette followed, drawing a blade of ice as the group took a defensive formation with Amalia in the center.

The rain stopped.  The air went silent, and Lysette’s heart rate started to increase.  She uncloaked her eye, looking around in every direction.  Nothing from behind, ahead, from either side, or above.  But when the ground rumbled a second time, Lysette leapt into action, grabbing Amalia and taking to the sky just as rock and debris erupted from below.

The other students narrowly escaped serious injury, and in the aftermath, a familiar scream followed from the carnage.  A massive landwyrm, this one a time and a half the size of the one Lysette fought two months prior, burrowed out of the hole and began flailing about.

Rayleigh attacked first, launching a blade of air that pummeled the landwyrm’s impressive scaly armor with a force that seemed even to surprise her.  Her look of shock turned to a look of glee as she hurled an even faster, more intense burst that chipped several of the beast’s scales.

Serrena turned to Rayleigh, and the two exchanged a wordless nod.  Serrena’s flaming fists burst from crimson orbs into shining yellow-white spheres.  Essence flew from Rayleigh into Serrena’s attack, and Lysette understood their synergy.  The former was concentrating and compressing the thinner mountainous air into a localized and highly pressurized area around each of Serrena’s arms.  

And that, coupled with the strength of the two’s new pact, allowed Serrena to punch a hole clean through the beast’s armored plates.  The beast hissed and roared, thrashing its tail at Serrena while attempting to bite her.  Serrena, for her part, dodged both with aplomb before launching another incendiary fist through the wyrm’s softer underbelly, filling the area with the rancid stench of charred, oversized lizard gizzards.

The creature tried to escape, lurching over to the hole from whence it’d sprung, but Lysette took no chances.  She couldn’t be sure that there weren’t more of them, or that it wouldn’t attempt to contact some more sinister master.  She lashed out with numerous shadowy tentacles to restrain the beast.  She pierced through the wound Serrena had left on its underbelly, and once she had gotten a foothold, wreaked havoc on its innards, destroying the creature from the inside much as she had two months prior.

Her comrades looked up to her with awe and fright alike as she continued her internal assault.  Serrena remained on guard as the creature’s thrashing weakened, while the others took positions behind the pyretic demigoddess.  After three minutes of flailing, the creature finally stopped moving, at which point, Lysette snaked her shadows through the creature’s insides and severed its spinal cord from the inside, ensuring that it was dead beyond a shadow of a doubt.

She held the creature’s Spark within her tentacled grasp, and for a moment, she hesitated to use her demonic powers and absorb the creature’s power into her own.  She knew that doing so would risk further temptation to use the ability in more morally ambiguous situations, but at the same time, she needed power wherever she could get it.  

Ultimately, she chose to trust that her comrades— her friends— would handle her before she dove into depravity, and allowed the landwyrm’s Spark to flow into her body.  She let out a sigh as the feelings of euphoria briefly washed over her before checking to ensure everyone else was okay.

“Is it dead?” Amalia whispered, still in Lysette’s arms.  “Are we safe?”

“It’s dead.”  Lysette dropped to the surface, set Amalia down, and looked around.  “But I can’t be sure that we’re safe.  There’s always the chance of another lurking nearby, or some other threat using this as bait to weaken us, or to set up an ambush.”

“I’m not sensing any human thoughts from anyone outside of us,” Nicholas said.  “But my range isn’t infinite, so I can’t be certain.”

The word ‘human’ wasn’t reassuring.  Not just because of the potential for another Cultivation beast, but because another deity could also be behind the attack.  Still, the first likely wasn’t behind a coordinated attack against the group, and the latter weren’t particularly numerous.  After a few minutes of scanning the area with her eye, she too was unable to see any signs of an ambush, and Lysette gave the all-clear to stand down and break their defensive formation.

The rain which had before paused now resumed with a vengeance, now accompanied by icy pellets assailing the party from above.  Rayleigh conjured another temporary air barrier to shield the party, though it was clear from her shortness of breath that she wouldn’t be able to maintain it for more than a few minutes.

While Serrena and Lilia did what they could to assist Rayleigh’s efforts, Gerald raised a crystalline dome about the size of a dorm room, and the eight Cultivators stepped inside the makeshift hut.  Kiarra conjured several tufts of hair and affixed them to the walls and floor for further insulation from the rain which restarted shortly after the battle ended, while Serrena exuded warm air to help the others warm themselves.

The group took the rest of the afternoon to rest, to mentally recover from the surprise attack, and to Cultivate— mostly in parallel, though Serrena and Rayleigh did so jointly.  As night fell on the second day, the rains finally began to subside, and most of the group headed off to sleep early.  Only Lysette and Serrena remained awake through the night, ruminating on the previous day’s events.

“I don’t think this storm was purely natural,” Serrena said.

“You think someone is trailing us?”

“No.  I think we’ve finally attracted some attention from one of the gods up in the Celestial realm, and they are doing what they can to slow our travels.  To what end, I don’t know, but I can’t imagine it’s anything pleasant.”

“At least I’ve not heard of any trouble on Mirae’s end when they contacted me just after dinner.”

“I’ll take the small relief where I can get it.”

Chapter 185: https://www.patreon.com/posts/110762790

Table of Contents: https://www.patreon.com/posts/table-of-101896170

Chapter 187: https://www.patreon.com/posts/110762798