Chapter 265 – Catastrophe descends

A hand, or something like it, forged from still burning metal but not existent at all, sunk into his soul. It was clenching around part of his innermost, and had already succeeded in ripping something from him. He was in pain, so much pain. It was one he knew, it was the pain of one of his elementals trying to rip mana from him against his will.

It was like that, yet so much worse. It crippled his thoughts, thoroughly, all he could do was listen as he fought against the torment. “John?” Rave noticed his pain, his clenched teeth, chest raising and falling quickly with shallow breaths.

‘John!’ Aclysia’s worried voice cried out in his mind. She was there as well, which was the reason Rave was awake in the first place. The guardian must have felt his pain and used Defensive Teleportation to be at his side as fast as possible. He could barely focus on her with his eyes. ‘What is going on? John? Can you hear me?’

Why was she asking? Their bond was permanent. John reached out to everyone, but pain prevented it. Slowly, it was subsiding, he would be able to reach them later. Weakly, he nodded.

Aclysia relaxed the slightest amount, she was holding his hand. ‘What is happening? I can feel that pain, I know it’s like that time Salamander tried to rip mana from you… I wish I could share that burden with you,’ Aclysia said. ‘I am so sorry I can’t relieve you of this pain… We need to find out what caused this!’

In the back of his mind, a certain foreboding Achievement popped back into John’s thoughts.

The first one is the voice of reason.

“Can ya stop talking to him telepathically and tell me what is going on?!” Rave exclaimed, softly caressing his face; “Is he sick? What is this?”

“One of the elementals ripped something from him,” Aclysia explained.

“Wha- but why? WHO?!” Rave shouted.

“Undine,” Gnome said with the grave sadness of unwanted truths.

The second one the reason’s word.

“What, what, what?” Sylph palavered with disbelief and worry in her usually so cheerful voice; “Undine would never do this! We would never hurt John! I am sure of it! He is good to us, why would she do that? There is no reason to do that! Somebody please tell me why anyone of us would ever do this to Johnny?!”

The fourth one far from treason.

“But she did, I can still feel everyone else,” Salamander said. Her voice was completely calm, for the first time for as long as John knew her. The fire she exuded was crackling quietly, holding back an inferno within. “She is gone. Undine did something unwise. We’ll see what she has to say for herself.”

The third one war on the world.

The pain slowly ebbed away, the high tide had passed, and now John was slowly able to formulate words again. “Where is she?” he pressed out. They were all there, all still connected to him. All but Undine. There was nothing where she was. A void, unfilled and uncontrolled. She wasn’t gone, but also no longer with him, had left a hole the size of herself.

One that he didn’t intend to leave empty unless he absolutely had to.

‘I see her,’ Momo said and willingly shared her view with everyone else. She was flying above the island. Having gone there as soon as the pains began, either to find or ward off whoever was attacking them for the slightest bit.

The sixth one walks the path her own.

There was Undine, thrashing through the gardens. There was no true form to her, just a mass of slime that ripped apart trees and bushes with an ease she shouldn’t have the strength for. She was howling, her normally so harmonious voice, that sounded like she was singing every word, now a horrible cacophony of sounds.

‘Where are you, Siena?’ John reached out to the last elemental. Despite the nightmare elemental being unbearable most of the time, he had made a contract with her. It was his duty as her summoner to ensure her well-being.

‘I am underneath Undine,’ she reported.

The seventh one silently creeps.

‘…I am sorry,’ she added after a moment of hesitation. That was a first, John needed to know why though. ‘This is my fault,’ she admitted, and memories of just a few minutes ago flooded his mind.

__________________________________________________________________

“I can reach his mana, but it’s blocked, why?” Siena wondered, inspecting her claws like snobby rich women inspected their fingernails.

Undine shared the feeling of reaching for John’s mana. She could easily do it, as she enjoyed the Gamer’s trust, but there was something even beyond that, which Siena couldn’t even feel through the walls that separated her and John’s inner spirit.

Two auras, resting latent potential. Siena whistled and then grinned menacingly, “Now that’s something that would be interesting to steal.”

“To steal what, you cock-gobbling whores?” Thana growled. “If you are thinking about crossing John, I am going to kick you off this fucking island.”

The three of them were walking around the edge of the island, decidedly outside the reach of anyone’s ears. Thanks to Thana, they could even ensure that none of the knights were stalking them. Momo could be a bit of a problem, but the support usually just flew around randomly and didn’t listen to anything anyone said.

“Undine found his Skill Evolution Points,” Siena explained; “Ah, I wonder how I can torture him with that knowledge.” The dots in Thana’s eyes rotated dangerously. The nightmare elemental tried her best at a calming gesture. She must have smiled too mischievously for the blood mage to take it seriously. Eyes darkened, anger grew larger…

It promptly swept over into thoughtfulness when they looked at Undine. It was subtle, but the way the slime girl had lowered her chin indicated that she was thinking about something. “…Oh no, you are not, you liquid shitstain,” Thana whispered in disbelief. “You are not going to force the usage of those on yourself!”

“Ah, what a wonderful idea,” Siena took hip swinging steps and, standing behind her as Undine faced the edge of the platform, whispered. “Then you could stop crying yourself to sleep because of how helpless you are. It must really hurt, being his fifth mind-bound girl and yet nowhere near the others’ power. Even Momo could out fight you.”

A surge of emotional pain flowed through their connection. Siena’s smile twitched downwards, her sadistic glee smothered by genuine care. Had she gone too far? No, the situation needed solving and talking around it did not solve anything. Best to goad her into action. That was better than a friend that lamented her fate.

 “It could corrupt me,” Undine mumbled.

“Ah, but there are cases where it didn’t because the elemental really wanted to become stronger. Don’t you want to become stronger, be free of that jealousy towards all of us, mhm? Besides, with John’s weird powers, anything might be possible,” Siena poured more of Undine’s own words into her. “Step out of the shadow of uselessness. Be more than a pretty face in the backline, unneeded and ignored.”

“I don’t hate being a healer…” Undine voice was a miserable melody. Siena knew that much, the mending elemental didn’t hate to heal, she hated being unable to do anything beside that.

“You heard her, edgehog,” Thana stomped towards the two of them, clearly not amused. “Just let her tell John about this whole ass-fest of an emotional trainfuck tomorrow.”

Siena’s eyes narrowed. “What if he doesn`t share her mind?” she hissed. “Why should Undine’s fate be reliant on him? What if he just decides that he likes it best this way and like that.” Siena snapped her fingers. “Our friend is doomed to a path she hates?”

“Are you really that fucking stu-“ The blood mage’s opinion came too late. There was a burst of water, a true flood of it, that suddenly erupted out from Undine. Siena grinned as she ducked into the shadow. Finally, someone that saw things her way and took charge of their destiny.

The water kept on pouring, sweeping Thana off the island, bending and breaking nearby hedges.

‘Undine that’s eno-‘ Siena tried to talk to her, but there was no one to talk to. Just a large, expansive void. The mass of water and slime moved mindlessly towards the inner island. Siena reached towards the void again and still felt nothing. There was nothing and in that nothing rose the cruel realization.

She had advised her friend into the worst possible outcome.

________________________________________________________________

John was seething. No, seething didn’t quite fit it. Something above that. He was double plus livid. ‘I’m dealing with your arrogant idiocy later,’ he calmly told Siena as he got up. For once, the shadow spirit did not even have token resistance to offer him, only resignation.

There was a multitude of windows he could see now that the pain had gone. Only a dull, annoying throbbing in his chest remained now.

“We will have to stop Undine and get this under control,” John told everyone what just happened, always keeping a close eye on the shapeless blob that now was the former mending elemental.

“What has happened to her?” Everyone looked over to the princess standing in the doorframe.

Behind her were Nia and two of the knights. “…She has been corrupted,” John said after slight hesitation. He had read up on what exactly it meant for an elemental to get corrupted a while ago.

If an elemental achieved a higher level of being, they needed to be fed more power from their home plane. For the briefest of moments, they were in a flux between the realms, whatever exactly that meant. If the ritual was done incorrectly, that could either mean that parts of them simply didn’t make it back, causing them to become broken elementals or that they got in touch with something that laid outside of what they should be getting their powers from.

The whispers of another plane of eldritch abominations speaking to each other over the endless vast nothing that was their realm slowly twisted elementals into something they shouldn’t be. It wasn’t bad, usually, just some disobedience or hatred for their summoner. Things that elementals normally didn’t feel but were still within reasonability of feeling beings.

“How far?” Lydia wanted to know, her eyes a merciless grey. John didn’t answer.

“I told you what the Lorylim are, Newman,” the princess of steel hissed, “does she or does she not understand them yet?”

“I don’t know,” John answered truthfully. The bond had been severed at Stage 3, but, for all he knew, she could have gone beyond that.

“We are aiming for termination,” Lydia told the knights and Nia.

“LYDIA!” John shouted out. “You are not killing Undine!”

“I am going to do what I deem necessary to protect Germany and Europe at large,” the princess told him in the iron tone she had used when they didn’t know each other. “We are above the most densely populated city in the Abyss, do you have any idea what repercussions could stem from letting an eldritch infection vector enter this city? There are no risks to be taken!”

“You will have to fight me before you get to try and kill Undine,” John threatened. Whatever was going to happen, he would not give her up without having tried to save her. Lydia narrowed her eyes, “My sworn knights, make sure that-“

“Enough!” A fireless blast of heat raged through the house as Nathalia, stirred by the commotion and having listened with her superhuman ears through the house, walked into the room. “You are not going against my lover’s will, arrogant noble,” the husky voice of the goddess of volcanoes, one of the most destructive beings in this world, made the final rule in this matter. “If he desires to save his elemental, then you will obey.”

Lydia’s jaw visibly clenched, the muscle clearly visible as her teeth grinded. For a moment John thought that this would come down to a fight even before they got any chance to do anything. He threw on his battle equipment.

“Ya idiots need to get your heads out of your asses!” Rave interrupted them all while jumping into her pants. The rare insult of the techno-lover actually seemed to breeze through the room like a reminding wind. “We have way bigger problems right now! If she ain’t saveable, we can determine that AFTER she’s been pinned down!”

“To be corrected on matters of priority by Rave of all people,” Lydia mumbled and looked at John. “Fine, have it your way, but if she is lost to us, I expect you to act accordingly!” They quickly readied themselves to face the water elemental that was thrashing outside.

The Metracana laid on a desk and waited to awake another day.

The eighth one stayed behind.