Fates Parallel Chapter 223 - Capture

Everything was going wrong at once. As if the heavens themselves trying to blast her to smithereens hadn’t already been a bad enough time, now Rika’s friends were in danger and there was nothing she could do about it. The lifeless look in Ja Yun’s eyes had been heartbreaking when she saw it, and Rika just wanted to go over and give the poor woman a hug—reassure her that everything would be alright. But she couldn’t—she had to stay sharp, and ready to act at a moment’s notice. Something was going to happen, and everyone knew it—the atmosphere was tense. Needless to say, Rika was having a bad day.

It was about to get a whole lot worse, she was certain. Yoshika was up to something—it was taking far too long to do Lee Jung’s treatments even if they were a couple of weeks overdue. She could also sense Yoshika's domain doing...something to Han Shin’s spell. The mage himself hadn’t noticed yet, but Rika could tell that the soldiers were getting antsy.

When the tension broke, it broke fast. Something unseen startled Yoshika, and she sent the entire courtyard into chaos with a single urgently screamed command.

“Now!”

Nobody hesitated. Hayakawa Kaede was the fastest to react—all but teleporting next to the captain. By unspoken agreement Rika moved to engage the lieutenant while Kim Yonsun supported Hayakawa against Sagong So. Neither of them had been the quickest to act after Hayakawa, however. To Rika’s surprise, it was Ja Yun who acted most decisively.

As if she’d been waiting for a signal the entire time, the former soldier’s listless expression hardened as she reared back and hurled something at Han Shin with all her considerable might. Ja Yun’s martial practice had been paying off, and Rika could barely follow the projectile as it caught the mage off guard and struck him in the face with a...splat?

The mud elemental wrapped its pseudopods around Han Shin’s head and held on tight. The mage desperately clawed at the slime creature smothering his face, but his hands found no purchase against its fluid body. Rika snapped out of her dumbstruck hesitation when she sensed his aura condensing against the elemental, attempting to disrupt the living blob of mana.

As unconventional and surprising as the attack was, the mud elemental was still only a first stage creature—weaker even than most equivalent cultivators, much less a third stage warmage like Han Shin. That wasn’t to say it wasn’t dangerous—Jia had been right to be careful with the thing, as benign as it had been so far—but if left alone against Han Shin, it wouldn’t be any threat. So Rika didn’t leave it alone.

Rika’s new and improved domain crashed down mercilessly against Han Shin’s aura, pushing back against his attempts to disrupt the mud elemental that was slowly working its way into his mouth, nose, eyes, and ears. Her control wasn’t as good as Yoshika’s or even Yan Yue’s back when they’d practiced, but it was enough to frustrate the lieutenant’s efforts and buy time.

With a muffled scream, Han Shin reached up and managed to gain a grip on the elemental’s mana core, but before he could wrench it away from his face Ja Yun caught up and grabbed his wrist, her claws digging into his arm and forcing his grip to loosen. Rika was surprised, but she continued to focus on support as Ja Yun used martial arts rather than spellcraft to bring her former colleague to the ground. It was a total reversal of what Rika had expected, but she was glad for it—she was still pretty exhausted from her breakthrough.

Ja Yun was completely merciless. She pinned Han Shin to the ground and sat on his chest, systematically tearing through his ongoing defenses and destroying his talismans. Then, she did something that made Rika’s eyebrows attempt their own heavenly ascension. Ja Yun’s aura reached out and connected with the mud elemental’s, and for a moment the two of them seemed to blend together as one—almost like Yoshika.

The elemental had already been aggressive in its attempts to smother the mage, but its efforts immediately redoubled. The semi-liquid creature forced its way into Han Shin’s thrashing body until nothing was visible but a glowing brown sphere in the back of the mage’s throat. Over the next few seconds, Han Shin’s body began to dessicate as his struggles grew weaker and weaker. His aura stopped fighting back against Rika’s suppression, then shrinking away on its own until it finally went out like a snuffed candle. Just like that, the surly mage was dead.

Ja Yun held out an arm, and the elemental came flowing back out of Han Shin’s mouth and up her arm, settling itself on an awkward perch on her shoulder. It had more than tripled in size, and had to envelop most of Ja Yun’s upper arm in order to stay balanced. It was easily one of the most horrifying, yet amazing things Rika had ever seen.

She didn’t have time to congratulate Ja Yun on...whatever it was she’d accomplished, though. There were threats other than Sagong So and Han Shin to worry about, including more hostile elementals and the rest of Ja Yun’s former squad.

Hayakawa had already managed to subdue Sagong So, and between the four of them, they managed to make short work of the remaining enemies, even as worn out as they were. When Rika finally turned her attention back to Yoshika—who had been conspicuously absent from the fighting—and her family, she wasn’t sure what to make of what she found.

Eui’s body was lying naked on top of her ruined clothing and an impossible amount of blood and gore. An Chunhei was busy being sick off to the side as her husband tried to comfort her, and little Lee Narae was just staring in silent shock at the entire scene. The steady rise and fall of Eui’s chest indicated that she was alive, but the gleam of a tiny red gem protruding between her breasts was concerning. Rika blinked at the scene, then again as if it would go away or change into something that made more sense. When it failed to correct itself she put her hands on her hips and shook her head in disbelief.

“What the hell did I miss?!”

—-

Yoshika slowly stirred awake—then jolted upright in a panic. She couldn’t feel her body—her other body. Oh no! She’d fucked up! She’d failed! She was—she was...not Yoshika, Jia realized groggily, as the transition from her restless unconscious state to proper wakefulness ran its course. Jia couldn’t feel Eui, their connection was as weak and tenuous as it had been when they were separated by strong enough barriers. She was alive, though—which was a good sign.

With the most important checks out of the way, Lee Jia finally took stock of her surroundings. She wasn’t far from where she’d fallen—this body, anyway. At some point she’d been moved into the throne room itself, where she was now surrounded by a dense, glowing barrier that acted as a cell of some sort—she’d been captured. With her in the cell were Eunae, Hyeong Aecha, and—thank the ancestors—Haeun. All of them were alive and well, though it seemed she’d been the first to wake.

The outside of their cell painted a grim picture. Seong Misun had, at some point, freed herself from the earthen spikes pinning her to the wall, only to end up skewered to the floor instead. Jia couldn’t tell if she was still alive, but the magical seal around her suggested that the elementals thought she was. Eunae’s mother had never managed to escape her block of ice, which was now surrounded by its own seal, and a third seal surrounded a solid-looking block of volcanic stone that Jia expected probably contained Seong Min.

The queen herself was nowhere to be seen. As epic as her battle with the void elemental had been, there was no longer any sign that it had ever happened. Just a field of pure emptiness where the throne should have been. Jia wished that she could still see into the spirit realm to investigate the throne-room-turned-prison, but without her connection to Eui, she only had half of her artifact—it wouldn’t work until she and the glove were both reunited with their partners.

Jia let out a sad sigh. They’d lost. She hoped that her family was still safe, and she was glad to still be alive, but the fact remained that they had failed to stop the elementals. The coup had been short, brutally efficient, and completely successful. Jia had a lot of unanswered questions—like why the mage colleges hadn’t intervened one way or another, or just what exactly it was the elementals were after—but they were distant concerns compared to the much more immediate question.

“Now what?”

“Standby for questioning.”

Jia nearly jumped out of her skin at the unexpected response to her rhetorical question. Void was...somewhere. Jia couldn’t see the apparent leader of the elementals, but its distinctive non-voice was impossible to mistake.

“Questioning? I thought we already went through that the last time you threatened my family. You left me with a blob, remember?”

“Correct. Await the emissary.”

Jia rolled her eyes. Elementals were even worse to speak to than spirits. Giving up on trying to get anything out of the inscrutable deity, Jia probed the edges of her prison with her domain. As expected, the barrier blocked her completely. In fact, it blocked everything. Apparently the elementals were either masters of formations, or had borrowed techniques from advanced mages, because the barrier formation imprisoning her was incredibly sophisticated. Judging from what she’d seen of the battle between the Seong family and the elementals, it was probably the former.

Though no warmth or air could pass through the barrier, it solved that problem by simply creating its own and destroying the excess. Jia was certain that Dae would have killed without hesitation for a chance to study it. Unfortunately, that meant it left absolutely no apparent weakness for her to exploit. Well, maybe. She had other ideas, but she set them aside as she checked on the others.

First, Heian. After a few seconds of meditation, Jia confirmed that her spirit daughter was resting peacefully within Jia’s soulscape—alive, but terribly exhausted from their ordeals. Jia remembered that Heian had been merged with her as part of Yoshika when she had put everything she had into restoring Eui’s body and winced. Jia’s cultivation—and probably Eui’s—had been rather badly damaged by the entire ordeal. They’d just drawn too much power from their foundations. It was hard to directly compare, but the damaged foundation would take months or years to repair, and left them at the equivalent of the early third stage in the meantime. It was a major setback.

Heian had also contributed to that, and was left weak and tired. Jia resolved to make it up to the poor cat spirit as soon as she got the chance. At least, that meant she wouldn’t be merging into Lee Hei and attempting to slip out through the spirit realm unless things got a lot more urgent. Her options were narrowing fast.

Next were Eunae and Haeun. Eunae was lying still on the floor, but breathing. Her little sister was curled up in a ball, snuggled into the fur of Eunae’s fluffy white fox tails. Without Eui, Jia had a much harder time channeling Wood essence in order to use Tranquility, so she had to rely on more old-fashioned methods of checking on their conditions. She shook Eunae awake as gently as she could.

As Eunae’s eyes flickered open, Jia made sure to look as far aways as possible, so as not to accidentally make eye-contact.

“Mmmngh, J-Jia?”

Eunae began to sit up, then froze.

“Jia! Yoshika?! Are you alright? What happened?”

Jia laughed sardonically and shook her head with a shrug.

“I was going to ask you the same thing. I don’t remember anything after I collapsed, I was uh...distracted.”

Eunae frowned, trying to adjust her posture to something more comfortable, but giving up when she realized her tails were pinned down by Haeun.

“Mm, not much to say, I’m afraid. Things went south quickly after that. We were overpowered and captured. I—I thought that Haeun was...”

She trailed off sadly, stroking her little sister’s hair.

“I’m just glad she’s okay.”

Jia nodded in agreement.

“Me too. Sorry for not being there for you. I had to uh...well, Eui exploded.”

Bless her heart, Eunae skipped past surprise and went straight to concern.

“Oh my ancestors! Jia? Is she—are you okay?”

Jia tried to grin confidently, but felt her facade slipping rapidly.

“We—I mean, she’s probably fine. Definitely alive. I can still sense her. I’m okay. Everything’s going to be just fine.”

She wasn’t sure who she was trying to convince, but when Eunae reached out to grasp her shaking hand, Jia nearly burst into tears.

“You’re right, Jia. We’ll get through this, I’m sure of it.”

Jia wiped at her eyes and nodded. Eunae had completely turned around her attempt at comforting. She chuckled mirthlessly.

“Right, I’d better check on Hyeong Aecha before—”

“The emissary has arrived.”

Void’s words interrupted Jia by a flurry of motion near the giant hole where the doors to the throne room once stood. The Ice and Magma elementals entered, flanking a rather put-out looking Ja Yun, who gripped the mud elemental to her chest so tightly it looked like it was about to pop—and had it gotten bigger? Following immediately behind her were Kim Yongsun, Rika, and Kaede. Eui’s unconscious form hung limply in Kaede’s arms.

Jia’s heart sank. What was wrong with Eui? Was she okay? What about her family? A million questions ran through her head. She didn’t get the chance to ask them. The doors shut behind the group and the pair of xiantian elementals quickly ushered forward...Ja Yun?!

Ja Yun had never looked more out of place as she stood in the center of the throne room, shaking like a leaf and squeezing the little blob creature for dear life. Every single being in the room focused their attention on her, and she looked like she might just die on the spot. The Void elemental’s resounding silence filled the room.

“Emissary. Communication established. You will conduct the questioning.”

Ja Yun’s bright green eyes swam in their sockets. She looked around, desperately trying to find someone—anyone other than her—that the voice might be referring to.

“Oh ancestors, please please please please tell me you are referring to somebody else. I’m just like...Muddy’s designated perch, right? She’s got this? I’m—I’m not needed here right? I’ll just—”

“Negative. You will conduct the questioning.”

The silence that followed Void’s declaration was deafening. Ja Yun just stared listlessly down at the elemental in her arms, and squeaked out one last, barely audible protest.

“Why me?”