Fates Parallel Chapter 229 - Essence

The girls panicked, each of them firing off every ice and water spell they could manage in a desperate attempt to stave off the encroaching elemental. It was implacable. Every cooled bit of molten stone was a drop in the seemingly endless ocean of energy that the Magma elemental had at its disposal. Yoshika was beginning to understand now what Jianmo had meant. While the magma itself was no more impressive than anything Harada Jun could come up with, the elemental had endless quantities of it, and perfect control. Even as a weak xiantian creature, it was perfectly capable of burying the entire palace grounds—perhaps even the city—under an ocean of lava.

It was easy to see how the elementals had overpowered the Seong clan. Mages needed time to prepare their magic—had to channel energy through their talismans and formations to cast their spells. Elementals needed no such thing. They were magic. The elemental before her didn’t have to do anything more than tap into the endless wellspring of power within it and unleash itself into the world. Unlimited power with no technique was still unlimited power.

Yoshika had made a critical error. There was no wearing a monster like this down, no winning in a battle of attrition with a foe that had endless reserves of power. The only way that six of them could have overcome it was with a sudden, all-out attack, putting everything on the line. Now, it was too late. The elemental had unleashed its full power, and there was nothing they could do to put it back in the literal and metaphorical bottle.

There was only her trump card. Divine essence to fight divine essence. Except Yoshika still didn’t know how to do it. Jianmo had made it sound easy, but it wasn’t as simple as just slapping the soulfire and divine essence together and throwing them at the elemental. She needed more. More time, more practice, more essence—the events of the last few days had left her utterly drained and a single day of recovery wasn’t anywhere close to enough. She couldn’t do this alone.

“Fall back! Through the breach in the wall!”

Yoshika led her friends into a retreat. The magma elemental hurled globs of molten stone after them, but for all its indomitable power, it was slow—relatively speaking. Breaking through into the main hall of the castle gave them a moment to breathe. Quite literally—the heat in the throne room had been stifling.

Rika wiped fruitlessly at her brow, her chest heaving as she struggled to get enough air.

“What—what now?! That thing’s going to smother us to death before we can even approach it at this rate!”

Kaede patted out some flames that had erupted on her clothing, shaking her head.

“This is a hopeless fight. We’re completely outclassed. I’m sorry Miss Seong, but I think our only option is to flee. I’ll personally grant you and your sister asylum—Yoshika’s family as well.”

Eunae grimaced, but before she could open her mouth to respond Yoshika interrupted.

“No. Not yet. We still have one more thing to try.”

Ja Yun swallowed nervously, clutching the droopy elemental in her arms tightly—Iseul clearly hadn’t fared well under the oppressive heat of the Magma elemental.

“The thing Jianmo taught you? I kinda thought you’d have done that by now...”

Yoshika hesitated.

“We—”

“No time, we’ve got to move!”

Rika’s interruption was punctuated by an explosion of rock, lava, and ash, as the elemental burst through the opening to the throne room with a speed that dwarfed its previously sluggish movement. The girls scattered away as it splashed down, rapidly expanding to fill the hall with its molten body. Yoshika didn’t have time to debate any longer, she had to act fast.

“Listen carefully to our voice! Don’t resist!”

Her friends responded with a mixture of confusion, affirmation, and—in Rika’s case—surprise. Jianmo had said to cheat, so Yoshika would cheat. She needed more, so she would get more. She couldn’t do it alone, so she wouldn’t. Yoshika began to sing.

It was an urgent, wordless melody. Hardly beautiful from a musical standpoint—in fact, it was downright discordant. Yet, as Yoshika’s voices harmonized, her song carried something that transcended the mere sound. The essence of Darkness, as she’d learned to understand it from her friend Yan Yue. The moon, dreams, hope. The essence of her song carried a different kind of beauty, to those that knew how to sense it.

Yoshika hoped that Yan Yue was alright, wherever she was.

The world grinded to a halt, even as Yoshika’s melody continued unabated. Her friends, mere moments away from fiery death at the hands of a foe too powerful for them to challenge, looked around in confusion. Rika tentatively reached out to poke a frozen glob of magma while Ja Yun stared down at her empty arms in consternation. Kaede was the first to catch on.

“This is an illusion? Yan Yue’s technique.”

Yoshika couldn’t respond while still singing, but it was her own domain—she could control it at will, so she manifested her spirit form, striding across the frozen lava as if it were solid stone.

“Yes—well, sort of. This is my soulscape. I’ve just brought you all into it and displayed a reflection of the outside world.”

Rika poked at the lava again, shaking her head in disbelief.

“You can do that?”

Yoshika shrugged.

“Apparently. I was mostly just acting out of desperation—that’s usually where I get all my best ideas.”

Kaede was quick to adapt to the new situation, carefully analyzing the frozen world around her.

“How have you stopped time like this? I assume that if the real world were still in motion, then we’d all be dead.”

Yoshika nodded.

“The same way I can see your movements when you use your ultimate technique and become weightless. Absolute Awareness. I’m borrowing a little bit from each of you and Heian to keep it up, but honestly this is extremely taxing.”

Indeed, Yoshika could already feel the pressure building behind her eyes. A throbbing pain that would gradually build up until it was an unbearable dagger to her skull. Ja Yun, glancing around urgently, suddenly cut in to voice her concern.

“Uh, guys...this is great and all, but where did the princess go?”

The voice that responded sent a chill through Yoshika’s spine.

“I’m right here, mortal. As I always have been.”

Yoshika whirled around to find the Kumiho—or Eunae’s fragment of it—standing right behind her. The fox spirit sneered down at her with a condescending glare.

“The little cat burglar and her rat thief partner. How kind of you to invite me in so soon after robbing me.”

Taking a fearful step back, Yoshika shook her head in terror.

“No, you’re not supposed to be here! My song should only work for Eunae.”

“Fool girl, have your inner spirits taught you nothing? I am Seong Eunae. The part of me you know—the stupid girl—sleeps safely within me. Protected from whatever thievery you’re up to this time.”

With her headache mounting, Yoshika didn’t have time to squabble with the spirit.

“Whatever, you’ll just have to do then. We need to stop this elemental or you’re going to die with the rest of us.”

The Kumiho glanced over her bare shoulder at the core of the magma elemental behind her, raising her eyebrows as if just noticing it.

“Is that why you’ve called me here? I’m afraid there’s nothing I can do against that thing. Not as I am. We’re all doomed. What a shame, I had such high expectations for this one.”

“Tsk, not if I can help it. We’re going to figure out how to kill this thing if my fucking head doesn’t explode first.”

Yoshika clutched her head for a moment before shaking it off. The pain was mounting faster than usual, perhaps because of the increased intensity with so many people connected to her. Wasting no more time, she called forth Jianmo’s divine essence.

A figure of Jianmo’s feminine form appeared floating before her, wreathed in pale green flames. The construct was still and silent, as if asleep. Jianmo’s memories and personality had already been stripped away, bundled up in the much smaller mote of divine essence that would serve as the ‘map’ that the elementals wanted so badly. The Kumiho inspected the figure critically.

“Tsk, is this what you’ve done with my stolen essence? What an artless waste. Here—”

She swiped a claw through the construct, her hand passing through it as if it were ethereal. When she snatched her hand back, it crackled with the same green flames.

“You didn’t need to use everything. Keep at least this much aside so that you can complete our bargain.”

Bargain? Yoshika furrowed her brows—what was she talking about—

“And it’s not enough. My stolen essence doesn’t carry enough intent on its own. Did you think you could just steal the power of the gods and hurl it at your foes like so many stones? Ridiculous—that accursed demon isn’t qualified to teach a kindergarten.”

The fox spirit tutted irritably, tossing the green ball of flame aside and letting it vanish back into Yoshika’s soul.

“Focus—all of you—and concentrate on your greatest asset, your defining traits, whatever it is which carries the most meaning to you. Create from that an essence of yourself, and imbue it into the construct. As half-formed as this is, you’ll be lucky if all of you together can give it life, but you carry the power of spirits within you—yes, even the humans. All living things do. If you can harness that, then perhaps you'll survive another day yet.”

With her piece said, the Kumiho stepped back and sat down on her own tails, wrapping herself within them as both cushion and blanket, apparently no longer interested. Yoshika met the eyes of each of her other friends in turn, and received nods of affirmation. None of them had any better ideas.

Yoshika closed her eyes and concentrated on her domain—except that she was already inside of her soulscape, so her focus ended up on everything around her. She could sense the souls of each of her friends, and the connections between her, them, and each other. Yoshika had her own thread to each of them, strongest to Eunae, and then Rika, followed by Kaede and finally a weak connection to Ja Yun. It struck her as odd for some reason that Eunae had the strongest connection to her, but she shrugged it off—none of them could compare to the bond between Jia and Eui that held her together.

Between her friends, she could sense connections to each other. Kaede and Rika had one, as did Rika and...well, everybody—though strongest with Ja Yun and Eunae. Ja Yun was the most isolated among them, with only her connections to Rika and Yoshika, as well as a faint thread that seemed to reach out to where Iseul had been forced to remain behind in the realm of the physical.

This, more than anything, was what mattered most to Yoshika. Connections, friends, family, love and unity, bonds of mutual trust and understanding. Even Eunae’s inner spirit, for all its bluster, didn’t seem to have the will to shun them entirely—her aid hadn’t come entirely from a place of self-preservation. Each person here was someone that Yoshika would lay down her life to protect, and she knew that each of them would do the same for her in turn.

That thought crystallized into a tiny spark of essence—not divine essence, but nothing that she could recognize as a normal element either. Much like Heian’s Shadow essence, or Eunae’s Soulfire, Yoshika had created something purely of herself—the essence of Unity. Mostly Unity...the essence was corrupted slightly by a small selfish streak.

As if Yoshika’s essence was actively drawing it out of the others, each of her friends began to crystalize their own unique essences. Kaede’s was a bright red star in front of her, radiating with Power in all its forms—the lens through which she saw the world.

Rika’s surprised Yoshika. She had expected something like Confidence, or Pride, or perhaps even something like Strength in a mirror of Kaede. But the tiny pink ember in front of her carried an unmistakable feeling—one that was at the core of Yoshika’s own domain. Yet Rika’s version of it carried a fundamentally different meaning, for all that there was overlap. Rika’s essence was that of Love.

Ja Yun was the last, and she stared down at her dull blue mote of essence and cried.

“Y-you don’t need me here. I don’t belong in this at all. I’m just—just nobody. Some random idiot who ended up in the wrong place at the wrong time. I’ll just hold you all back...forget about me...”

Her essence was Uncertainty, and Yoshika’s heart ached for the poor girl. Whatever had led Ja Yun to the depths of such self-loathing was something that she would get to the bottom of another time. For now, all she could do was accept her new friend with open arms.

“You are worthy of love, Ja Yun. I think Rika’s demonstrated that pretty clearly, and I trust her judgment. She loves you, and she’s like family to me. Your essence is as beautiful and important as any of ours. We’ve all got egos that could use some grounding, don’t you think?”

Ja Yun blushed, staring down at her feet as she held out the tiny mote of her essence for Yoshika. Each piece of brilliant energy floated up towards the construct, but Yoshika felt as if something was missing, she turned to inspect the Kumiho’s lazing form.

“What about you?”

The fox spirit turned away from her and huffed.

“Haven’t you taken enough from me already? How selfish can one pair of thieves be?”

“If Eunae really is somewhere in there, as part of you, then I think you know as well as I that she’d want to be part of this.”

“Tsk, you don’t know us as well as you think, little thief. Fine then! See for yourself—the essence of the one you trust so dearly!”

A tiny green droplet appeared, glimmering brightly, though it shed no light itself. Yoshika felt her gaze being drawn into it, fascinating her. The essence of Control. She didn’t know what it meant for Eunae—didn’t want to think about it. Eunae was her friend, and she would accept her for who she was, no matter what.

Shutting her eyes and forcing herself not to get lost in the dark green essence, Yoshika added it to the construct. Something shifted, and the gently burning image of Jianmo collapsed into a single dense point of brilliant rainbow-colored light. Then, it shattered, breaking into six distinct shards and returning to the bodies of each girl—Jia, Eui, Kaede, Eunae, Rika, and Yun.

In an instant, each of them understood on a fundamental level what they had just done, and how to wield the power of the sacred art they had just created together. Each of them had just enough essence within them for a single use—and only if they all banded together. It would have to be enough.

Returning to their physical bodies, all six channeled the new essence through their bodies at the same time as the world began to move again. In perfect synchronization, they spoke the words to call forth the power that they had just created.

“Sacred Art: Foxfire Avatar of the Sixfold Paths.”