Godslayer Lysette: Chapter 195

Chapter 195: The Incarnation of Darkness

Zarielle scowled with such intensity that it put Serrena’s and Kiarra’s previous attempts to shame.  Her arms dissolved into a multitude of tentacles, and then those split off into even more strands that all undulated about and around her.  Her divine aura flared to life, sending with it a gust of wind that pushed Lysette back briefly before she focused her mind and body alike with the Periapt of Stability.

“You would raise your arm against your patron?  Against your loving goddess who has sacrificed so much for you?”  Zarielle’s scowl broke for the briefest of moments as a black tear slid down her pale cheek.

“If it’s to save the people who look up to me?” Lysette said.  “Yes.  I would, and I won’t hesitate.”

Mirae’s finger glowed a pale blue-white as they pointed toward Zarielle.  “I’m with her all the way.  To see the new Aimarion that we’re going to build together, with Serrena’s help and the help of all the people of Ciricu and millions more throughout Aimarion.  And I will not let anything stand in our way.”

Serrena’s aura flared to counter Zarielle’s own.  She cloaked herself in orange flames, pushing back the waves of darkness with her own incendiary light.  “Five million years of wisdom, and you’re still an idiot.”

Zarielle snarled, her teeth of brilliant white and tongue and mouth of pure darkness on full display.  “How dare you speak such trifling words, girl?  You, a mere infant compared with me, playing with forces beyond your understanding and outside of your control.”

“You don’t get it, do you?” Serrena continued.  “I used to think I was the best.  That I alone would become the greatest Cultivator on Aimarion.  Lyse showed me that alone, I wasn’t worth shit.

“But then we started working together.  And thanks to your naive, sometimes boneheaded Godslayer, I was able to awaken my own latent divinity.  I was able to push myself even further than before, and by forming further pacts and alliances, my strength completely eclipses anything I ever thought possible.

“And so I’m going to keep moving along this path, pushing myself and my friends to ever greater heights.  All while we work to tear the pantheon from their lofty thrones.”

“I haven’t betrayed my mission,” Lysette said.  “I have continued to seek power.  I’ve grown far stronger than I ever thought possible, and I’ve done so working side by side with my companions and the humans who look up to me as their protector.  So please, let’s talk this through, find common cause, and figure out where we all go from here.  We all want the same thing.”

Zarielle’s eyes narrowed as she fixated upon Lysette.  “Tear the pantheon from our thrones?  You tolerate such insolence from your so-called comrades?  If you desired the same thing as I, then you would know how antithetical your recent actions are to those goals, and how much your so-called friends stand in my way.  And you don’t just threaten my plans, but the entirety of Aimarion as well!”

The entirety of Aimarion?  Lysette nearly shed a tear as the realization set in.  Zarielle wanted vengeance against Asterion.  Wanted to see him suffer.  Dead, even.  But she was quite content with the system as it was.  Content with being one of the gods warring perpetually, vying for supremacy.  Content with treating humanity like crops just like every other god.  And though Lysette had hoped at times that it wasn’t true, that Zarielle’s concern and care was truly motherly, her hopes were misplaced.  She was never more than a tool.

“Then maybe Aimarion needs to change!” Lysette said.  “It’s clear that you and your ilk are poor stewards of this world.  You’ve already ruined it once.  I promised the keepers of the Aestori, my friends, and myself that I wouldn’t let the world burn again!”

Zarielle’s expression went deathly serious.  “If that’s how you feel, then you can perish right alongside them.”

Zarielle blotted out the stars and summoned two orbs of shadow in her hands, Essence coalescing along with the solidified darkness.  Lysette rushed forward, not waiting to see what Zarielle’s attack would be.  She extended her dark tendrils outward to bat away Zarielle’s own as she cloaked both hands in ice and readied for close-range combat.  Her movements were swift and precise, evading spires of darkness tearing apart the ground at her feet while also sidestepping the ones coming from behind at the sides.

Lysette leapt, pulling her right arm back and concentrating her strength.  Her eyes met Zarielle’s as her blade of ice carved a path forward.  The distance closed faster and faster as she readied herself to finish the fight in a single blow, all while Serrena and Mirae were keeping Zarielle’s other attacks at bay, pelting her form with blasts of fire and ice alike.

As Lysette started her attack, Zarielle smirked.  “I gave you the power to seek your revenge, but even reborn as a demon, you apparently lack the acumen to wield it.  I shall reclaim what is mine and hope my next Godslayer can carry out the task you are no longer fit for.”

She raised her left hand and fired an overwhelming burst of corrosive shadow, one she had been charging since the fight began.  The Essence contained within the attack was enough to severely injure Lysette, if not kill her outright.  Still, even as her body dove into the heart of the attack, she waited until the last possible moment before distending spacetime.

In the same instant, Lysette reappeared behind and to Zarielle’s side.  She coated her hand in shadow and slammed it into the small of the Goddess of Darkness’s back, forcing her body directly into one of Mirae’s Boreal Rays.  Now confident that her patron was far from invulnerable here on Aimarion, Lysette pressed the attack. One punch, then another, then a third, all crescendoing into an all-out pummeling fierce enough to make the deity bleed.

As Zarielle’s form collapsed into the dirt, Lysette maintained the initiative, slashing at her wounded body with all the force she could muster.  The attacks couldn’t kill her— her true self was still safely away in the Celestial realm— but it would make certain that she would never again threaten her friends or the people of Ciricu.

Serrena jumped into the flames, igniting her fists even brighter and hotter.  Their incandescence exploded from a warm orange to a searing white as her fist crashed down onto the ground.  Zarielle attempted to negate the attack with equal and opposite force, and nearly succeeded, only relenting and falling back when Mirae began erecting a tomb of ice surrounding her.

She forced herself back to her feet.  Her wounds were already healing, patches of darkness grafting onto her skin to staunch the superficial bleeding.  But her breathing was strained.  More than that, she seemed dumbfounded as she stared at Lysette, sizing her up and down.  Her gaze fixed upon Lysette’s right thigh.

“I see.  I was… mistaken.”  Zarielle stood back to her full height, looking none the worse for wear following the scuffle, but her stamina had dropped significantly both from the barrage of attacks she used and her regeneration following Lysette’s onslaught.

“You did not Deconstruct the Scepter as I feared.  Rather, you are even more foolish and dangerous than I’d imagined.  Grafting not one, but two artifacts into your body like that.”

Lysette teleported behind Zarielle, then jumped again in response to her next attack, a thorny whip of shadows which attempted to constrict and tear her apart.

Lysette was again assailed by another massive beam of darkness as she reappeared in physical space.  In the instant before the attack connected, she activated Reciprocity Dominion around herself as she batted away Zarielle’s hand to deflect the attack.  She sustained a small wound to her shoulder in the process, and though it burned far more intensely than she had expected, Zarielle had suffered the same damage.

Serrena followed up with a fiery fist clean through Zarielle’s back, one with enough force to tear straight through and emerge through her stomach.  Her victory was short lived, as darkness snuffed out her flames a second after landing.  Zarielle dissolved her body much like Lysette, and emerged whole but not unharmed.

“So, this is the power of Reciprocity incarnate.  Perhaps I was wrong about you.  Despite your… transgressions against me, I am willing to overlook this rebellion.  Aid me in the disposing of the two interlopers here and I will forgive you for striking against me.  I will even guarantee the safety of this village you call your own.  You have my word.”

Lysette shook her head.  “No.  This isn’t the power of Reciprocity incarnate.  Not alone.  This is the power of Reciprocity, Ambition, and Devotion fighting together, aided by Stability and empowered further by the hopes of the thousands of people who want to live lives of peace, untouched by the wars that have ravaged this world for eons.”

“Peace?”  Zarielle shook her head.  “Peace is a naive ideal, a falsity for feeble mortal minds to cling to.  As long as there is power, there will always be those who seek it at all costs.”

Zarielle’s strength spiked and Essence gathered all about her as darkness congealed even denser and darker than it had before.  Even as she strained and grimaced and her form struggled  to hold so much ambient Essence, she continued to draw yet more within her.  Lysette shuddered, trying to figure out what she was doing.

Her form started to expand.  Her muscles bulged.  And soon too, her stomach, her face, and her entire body swelled like a balloon.  Lysette rushed through the waves of darkness in an attempt to grapple Zarielle’s body before it exploded.

“Mirae, Serrena!  If I don’t make it through this, look after everyone.  Carry out my legacy in my stead.”

“Lyse!” Mirae screamed.  “No, I’ll–”

Serrena grabbed their arm and pulled them back as they leapt after Lysette.  She shook her head, and after a brief pause, the two retreated back toward the village.

“I will love you eternally, Mirae.  Even after death, if the fates will it so.”

Lysette forced her way through the shadowy mass, pulling what shadows she could into herself and readying for a teleport as far as she could force the jump.  Her own power surged, and Zarielle’s dipped ever so slightly, but the explosion was still imminent.

“What are you doing, Lysette?” Zarielle screamed.

“Protecting my people.”  Lysette smiled.  “As I promised I would.  Like a goddess should.”

“A teleport like that?  You can’t!  It’ll tear us both apart!  Even if your body can handle–”

Lysette smiled.  “Then it does, Zarielle.  But just know that your explosive tantrum is going to set us both back considerably.”

“Such is the price of those who defy the gods.”

“Defying the gods?  I am a Godslayer, Zarielle.  And a demon.  Defying the gods is my reason for existence.”

Lysette distended the fabric of reality, warping miles upward with all the strength she could muster.  As the two reappeared in the stratosphere above Ciricu, Lysette channeled the final bit of her strength, kicked Zarielle’s body, and launched herself downward back toward the surface.  The incarnation of her former master burst into a silent explosion of shadow and wind.

The darkness numbed her, the explosive force deafened her, and her exhaustion blinded her.  As her consciousness slipped away, only one thought remained.  Mirae, I love you.

Chapter 194: https://www.patreon.com/posts/111216655

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

Chapter 196: https://www.patreon.com/posts/111625025