novelzi Chapter 512 – Letter By Letter
Chapter 512 – Letter By Letter
Kassandora took a deep breath and had to consciously relax her grip on Joyeuse. She stabbed the greatsword into the floorboards that were expanding out from Neneria. Vividly coloured and terribly loud traces and growths of jungle-infested swampland battled against the desert of sand Kavaa’s healing brought about. Huge globules of bacteria rolled and twisted and fell forward. They popped like custard cakes, expelling germs that flowered into sickly, dark vine and thick, uncontrolled grass and bent, crooked flower when they touched the sand. Another pulse of Kavaa’s energy would heal the disease from the new growths and plants entirely.The sickness would be wiped away by the Goddess of Health’s power in an instant. Those dark vines, bulbous and with spots of pus that gave way to more of their own kind as if the plants were trying to craft some giant green net was healed entirely. Every pathogen and every bacteria and every virus was burned away by the strength of the Goddess of Health. For a construction fashioned entirely out of disease, Kavaa’s touch was not just fatal, it annihilated beyond any hope of repair. Kavaa’s power ran through the ground she blessed and healed into lifeless sand and then up plants dropped by the swarm of huge, man-sized illnesses like bolts of lightning.
Kassandora watched Neneria’s dead ground slowly expand. It was not the desert Kavaa was creating, where it was a healing of the ecosystem and destruction of its flaws to leave only the sand that could not possibly be made to carry disease. It was an overhaul of the environment, total and final and unapologetic in its steady advance. Sand was swallowed by grey slabs of stone and ancients wooden planks which were promptly decorated by cobwebs that lacked spiders on them or flies in them.
The Goddess of War put her hand on Of Health’s shoulder. “Kavaa, you can stop now. Rest.”
Anassa took a slow, deep breath and kept calm. She had to stay calm. She was the Goddess of Sorcery. She had ascended. She did not panic. She had overtaken humanity and proved it could be done. She had done it all. She was the sole person in the entire known history of Arda to become a Divine! And not just any Divine, but a Divine so powerful that she could compete with the likes of Maisara and Elassa! Panic was not tolerated for such a being! It would not be! She put her hand on Baalka’s forehead. Something inside must be happening, her small sister’s body temperature was rising.
Rising fast.
It better be Arascus’ doing.
Anassa’s crimson eyes glanced to her father again and she tried not to question where he went. Hopefully, he had done the impossible and passed under the Watcher’s noses. Hopefully.
If anyone could do it, it was him.
Kassandora watched Neneria’s essence take over the last scraps of Kavaa’s retreating desert. The Goddess of War tightly gripped Of Health’s hand as they stood, the latter breathing deeply and struggling to stand up straight. It was one thing to keep the souls chained to the fragile bodies of them and not let them pass on. It was another entirely to try and out-heal all disease. Kassandora had seen Kavaa in action enough times to know what the woman was like. She could push on for great bursts of power, but the moment she stopped and fell was the moment she would be out for hours if not entire days. “Stay Kavaa.” Kassandora’s grip got tighter as she forcefully kept the Goddess of Health awake. “Stay.”
“I am.” Kavaa said, her voice heavy and haggard as she took greedy breathes to try and recover. “I am Kassie.” She said again and even in this dreadful situation, Kassandora found herself smiling at the pet name. From one side, Kavaa’s perfectly healed jungle was swallowed by the endless well of Disease that was Baalka’s soul, from the other, Neneria’s terrible presence devoured the sands. Kassandora caught her breath as she saw the dark brown floorboards that Neneria’s overwhelming presence annexed for itself come to a stop against Baalka’s ever-expanding illness.
On one side, trees began to grow high as sentient germs grew on their branches like fresh fruit. They reached the size of basketballs, then fell. Each one doubled in size again before it touched the ground. By the time they had managed to drag themselves close enough to collapse on Neneria’s slabs of grey-stone, they had grown taller than all four of the intruder Goddesses. Baalka’s realm grew dark. The sky was a tapestry of a pus-filled and diseased wound, the horizon became tainted as the mountains began to collapse and melt and move towards the four Goddesses. The forest had become a jagged set of twisting shapes that tried to resemble the trees they were based on, but moved and pushed too quickly to truly succeed at being anything more than giant cells.
And from close by, Neneria’s cold, lifeless floor of dark wooden planks and smoothed stone began to expand. Square blocks rose out of the ground, from those rose circular pillars. The legs of bookshelves materialized from the bottom up. They were fashion out of dark-red wood and the tomes began to appear even as the shelves still grew. Kassandora would have no expected it, but there was something that fit. Neneria presence was an endless library, filled with cobwebs and dust and untouched, utterly desolate yet bearing all.
Kassandora saw a huge parasite slither onto the stone and into one of the columns.
Which one would claim the other?
Moment of truth.
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Anassa’s crimson eyes grew wide as she looked at Baalka’s face. Her hand had felt the warm wetness first, then her eyes caught the line of red running down her sister’s cheek.
A thin trail of blood had started to pour from her nose.
Kassandora glanced at Neneria and wished she didn’t. The Goddess of Death stood silent and moving, her hands were held together as if in prayer. Her head was lowered but her sister was tall enough that Kassandora could still make out the fact Neneria had closed her eyes in order to try and contain her tears or maybe hide from the site of what was happening. Lips mouthed silent words, each syllable and turn of the cheeks threw tears that were racing just as silently down the woman’s face. Maybe a better person would have called it off. Maybe a better person would find a better plan. Maybe a better person would risk it all to win it all.
Kassandora was not that better person. Wars were lost on grand risks. Ultimately, man only had to lose once to lose everything he had won. Kassandora saw that massive parasite of a worm slithering forward in some attempt to try and madly knock down one of the pillars which was still rising into eternity. Neneria did not move. Her silent prayer became barely audible, she was asking for strength and for forgiveness from the universe at large.
And that huge parasite, its edges soft and with fleshy tendrils, suddenly collapsed. It fell onto the stone floor and its body returned to a thin dust. A huge block of mood, as wide as a car, suddenly began to turn and flip upside down. Another base of a pillar formed, as did a ceiling. The rain coming from the sky that had previous been destroyed by Kavaa’s healing would now cross into the space Neneria was claiming for herself and then lose all life. They would fall down to the ground, their bodies crumbling away as they did.
From dust they were made, to dust they returned. Every illness and every cell and everything that could be even linked to the abstractness of “life” in some fashion. And when it was all made of vigorous, living disease, it would return to dust.
Anassa rolled Baalka onto her side, leaned her head on her arm and positioned the other forward just as the woman started to splutter up blood. Now it was coming from within her mouth.
Kassandora cursed herself for what she was doing as she saw the sky slowly give way to ceiling. Like the tears of the Goddess creating them, cold, unlit chandeliers of gold and silver and bronze dropped from the ceiling. Yet unlike Neneria’s crying, they did not fall down onto the ground, they hung off chains. Walls with great windows of stained glass that had been dulled to muted colours began to spring up in the distance as Neneria’s conscious began to form rooms and spaces. Cabinets defended them from the advance of Baalka’s illness. Bookshelves formed labyrinths which funnelled the huge, vehicle-sized pathogens down corridors in which they would simply fade away as Neneria wiped all traces of their pestilent life away.
Kassandora let Kavaa drop next to Elassa. The two Goddesses sat down next to each other, Of Magic was still curled up into a pathetic ball as she shook uncontrollably from her panicked crying. Kavaa fell onto her back, her arms and legs spread out as she greedily drank the cold and stale air of Neneria’s demesne. Further away, vine dropped dead and was cast out of the ground as it became dust and was killed, flower wilted to knowing, the dust of its corpse served to build another of the dark wooden planks that made up Neneria’s ancient library. Great plains of swamp reeds would dry up, fall, turn to dust, be swept away by the wind and then reveal they had been more of Neneria’s presence underneath them. Trees would fall to the ground as columns of grey brick took their place.
A sister would be killed today. Kassandora released her breath. Neneria had been correct, the Goddess of Death was truly overwhelming in spirit. Those mountains in the distance still closed in on them, but from how easily Neneria was wiping away threat after threat, Kassandora did not think they would stand much of a chance. A sister would die. Another burden would be added to the weight on her back. It would be a disaster. She knew that such an action should break her, that it would break any normal person.
Yet Kassandora knew herself. Today, she would think it terrible, she would sleep. She would wake up. She would still be Kassandora, Goddess of War. No matter how much she wished it would ruin her, no matter how much she imagined the pain and grief it would cause, tomorrow would come. And then there would be a day after tomorrow.
And it would continue like that unto infinity or death, whichever came first.
Anassa flinched as she heard the first sound escape from Baalka after she had been carried out of the Jungle in Arika. The Goddess of Disease gasped.