Chapter 106 - The Farm in Irttat
Chapter 106: Tower of Crows 14
***
Tatiana walked further and further, holding Danice, until she disappeared into the depths of the forest.
The mist grew thicker.
Lucita took two steps to follow, and in the end could see nothing more.
She felt a little lost.
All this time, her perspective had remained bound to Tatiana's, forcing her into the role of an observer, watching memories both vivid and blurred drift past.
And now...Was the memory over?
What was this lake? What were these gravestones? Had Vivian become one of them?
And where had Danice gone? Tatiana had no quarrel with Lucita, so why had she pushed Lucita into a lake that was lethal to the touch?
She felt as though countless mysteries had tangled together, and the most crucial thread had snapped just at this moment — or rather, ended, leaving her alone here.
The sunlight slowly faded. Clouds churned. The mist in the forest grew thicker.
The light always seemed to come through something, unable to reach this place.
Everything was hazy and indistinct, even sounds too reluctant to carry far, only the autumn grass on the ground still rustling softly in the faint wind.
Lucita looked around, trying to locate the tower where the crows circled and regain her bearings. Only then did she realize the morning dew had soaked completely through her clothes. The damp fabric was disappearing inch by inch.
Death-energy was crawling upward along the cloth.
A chill ran through her. Her mind immediately went to the sight of what had happened to Tatiana, and she quickly pulled off the cloak and flung it away.
She looked down. Her trouser legs had already been eaten through in ragged patches.
Her heart sank. She knew that simply being here meant there was no escaping the corrosion of death-energy, so she accepted this reality and forced herself to think clearly.
Tatiana's ordeal had disturbed her composure. There was no need for her to be this panicked.
For one thing, she was not a creature of life in the way elves were. She held no natural opposition to death-energy, and so would not be corroded as severely, let alone to the point of threatening her life.
For another, she had already come to understand the power of death before this. She had even entered the world of death under her own power, and left a stable entrance behind for Violet to follow.
Though she might temporarily be no match for Tatiana's decades of accumulated power, she had an advantage unique to herself: she possessed both life and death at once.
The living can die; the dead can live. The two, like an ouroboros endlessly converting into each other, formed all the flourishing and withering and cyclical renewal of the world.
She also noted, with precision, that the death-energy now corroding her was not the same as the death-energy she had seen corroding Tatiana.
What Tatiana had encountered was the same force of resistance she herself had met when first entering the forest. Because she was not a creature of life, the effect on her had been far less dangerous than on Tatiana. In fact, that subtle difference was what had led her to the understanding of death in the first place.
Whereas the dangerous death-energy now eroding her own body was not, in essence, coming from the forest in Tatiana's memory. It came from the lake surrounded by the graveyard, that Lake of Death.
Yes — she had not forgotten. She was inside this lake's memory.
Likely owing to the resilience of her divine body, the causative force of death in the lake had not broken through the barrier of her body, and had allowed her to drift in this memory-world for a very long time.
Now, at last, they were beginning to threaten her. They had broken through the calm of this memory and were corroding her spirit directly.
This realization also told Lucita something: the danger this lake posed to her was not beyond remedy.
The crisis was pressing. And the opportunity to resolve it had arrived at the same moment.
Countless scattered thoughts flashed through her mind.
First, what Tatiana had done rose to mind.
Contain the death-energy?
No. Better not to go that route.
The harm death-energy did to a living being was plain as day. She wasn't an elf, so it wouldn't be as dangerous for her, but she had no wish to pay the price of permanent damage.
And the risk was too high. One misstep and it would mean death by exhaustion.
She had more tools available to her, and should have more options.
Better, then, to tame them.
She held the authority of the cycle of life and death. She ought to make proper use of it.
Lucita closed her eyes.
In the world of the spirit, freed from the obstruction of physical form, her sensory tendrils reached far more smoothly and spread out into the distance.
She found, unlike the physical world, this forest filled with death-energy seemed to have no perimeter she could detect.
But she was not afraid. She had always known this was nothing more than a lake.
However much Tatiana accumulated, however concentrated the death-energy here, what it could hold was no more than ten years of buildup, a small and finite body of water.
It had borders, and it had an end.
Don't rush, Lucita, she told herself.
Lucita reached out and grasped a tendril of death-energy that had been coiling around the hem of her clothes. In her hand, faint light flickered. Before long, countless stars were flowing through that tendril of energy.
The black slowly faded, gradually transforming into a shifting, alternating dark green.
After death is extinguished, new life can be nurtured.
She nodded in satisfaction, exhaled, and felt hope rising in her chest. Then she settled cross-legged on the ground, closed her eyes slightly, and entered deep meditation.
Her sensory tendrils extended in a flash to a thousand miles beyond her.
Those small tendrils drew in tendrils of black mist from the air. Although it was early morning, the forest began to faintly shimmer with starlight.
***
Violet was pressing grimly: "What is the water in that pool? Why does it carry such heavy death-energy?"
Tatiana's face was ashen: "That is not water. That is death itself."
Sensing the heaviness in Violet's breathing, she added in a low voice: "Your friend, by now, should have been corroded entirely."
Violet's throat clenched.
After a pause, she said, her voice strangely pitched: "No. No, she wouldn't be. You have no idea who she is. How could she die? She cannot die."
Tatiana concluded that this king had lost her mind from grief.
She would have liked to offer some sympathy to this king of her own people, but Violet was not someone who would accept anyone's sympathy.
She called for Delphine: "Please hold her in place for the time being."
The situation was not yet entirely clear, but there was something else she needed to do now.
"I understand, Sister." This was no small matter, and Delphine agreed without hesitation, asking nothing further.
Before Tatiana could react, Violet released her, sheathed her sword, and walked toward the lake.
Tatiana didn't understand what was happening, and felt no sense of being restrained whatsoever, so she stepped forward — and walked straight into something solid.
"Hss—" She reached up instinctively to touch the lump already rising on her forehead, and then suddenly understood. Both hands went to the invisible wall of air in front of her, her expression incredulous.
Even Tatiana recognized what this was. A spatial confinement — a technique of the dragon kin!
She tapped the wall and couldn't conceal her excitement: "The dragon kin! So you're truly not a spirit of death. You're from the dragonkin, aren't you?
Delphine gradually materialized, repeating with an expression of faint bewilderment: "Dragon... kin?"
Violet had walked up to the shore of the central Lake of Death. A ball of dark-green life-water rose from her palm, flowing slowly outward to envelop her entire body.
Even as the one among the elves with the greatest life-force, she was not immune to constant corrosion by the pure causative force of death.
This life-water was what she had drawn from the Sacred Lake.
It was probably only the Sacred Lake that could withstand this Lake of Death — its complete opposite.
In this regard, Tatiana harbored remarkable ambition.
What exactly was she plotting?
Violet temporarily set aside her worry for this elf and the future of the elven race. Once the life-water had wrapped her completely, she gripped her sword and prepared to jump in.
At that exact moment, the lake before her suddenly erupted into a great swirling vortex.
Violet startled and immediately stopped, eyes fixed on the change in the lake.
And then, with precision, she sensed it: the death-energy was slowly fading.
Tatiana was equally perceptive. She, who had barely changed expression when a sword was held to her throat, now suddenly erupted with agitation, slamming the wall of air and screaming: "Violet! What did you do to it?!"
Violet looked back in surprise.
Tatiana valued this lake more than her own life...
The thought flashed past.
She simply shook her head slightly: "It wasn't me."
"Not you?" Tatiana gave a cold laugh and demanded, one question after another: "Then who? Who could do something like this inside a lake full of death-energy? Who else is there?"
The sound of water continued.
Violet saw a faint shimmer of starlight rising at the center of the lake. Then a wet head suddenly broke the surface, speaking in a voice made slightly nasal by water: "It's me."
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