Chosen By The Lover's Constellation-Chapter 211: Eternity, Part Twelve
{Lianna}
Lianna stared at the scene before her, heart pounding.
She knew what she had to do, but the weight of it felt almost unbearable.
"Enverna," she called out, her voice trembling but resolute. "Just tell me what to do. Go ahead, it’s okay," Enverna had said.
Lianna took a deep breath, clutching her stump, feeling the warmth of the blood still trickling from her wound.
She focused, tapping into {Lover’s Intuition} for what felt like the last time.
"Run up straight ahead," Lianna finally instructed, her voice clear despite the chaos. "And be ready to dodge left."
Enverna nodded, no hesitation in her movements. She trusted Lianna completely.
With a determined look, she sprinted towards Vy.
"You... AAAAAAAAAARGGGHHHH!"
Vy, wounded and furious, met Enverna halfway.
Her eyes blazed with a mixture of fear and rage and fury, her lightning-coated hands crackling ominously. She charged forward, clearly intending to end the fight with one final, desperate attack.
They inched closer and closer until...
The two clashed. 𝓯𝓻𝒆𝙚𝒘𝓮𝙗𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝒍.𝙘𝓸𝙢
A puff of dust rose into the air as their weapons met. For a moment, everything seemed to hang in the balance.
As the dust settled, Lianna realized what had happened.
Enverna’s spear had fully penetrated Vy’s heart, the water-coated tip delivering a fatal blow. But Vy, in her final moments, had managed to slice off Enverna’s right arm with her lightning-coated hand.
If Enverna hadn’t dodged at the last moment, she might have lost her head entirely.
Both girls collapsed. Enverna fell to her knees, gasping for breath, while Vy landed face-first on the ground, her body twitching slightly.
"Enverna!" Lianna cried out, rushing to her side. She knelt beside her, eyes filled with concern. "Are you alright?"
Enverna, pale and trembling, managed a weak smile.
"I’m alright," she said, her voice strained but steady. "Just... a bit of a flesh wound, hehe... But, hey," she raised her stump. "We kind of match now, haha."
Lianna let out a shaky laugh, tears streaming down her face.
She hugged Enverna tightly, careful not to jostle her injured arm.
But their moment of relief was cut short. Suddenly, Vy began to yell, her voice filled with venomous hatred.
"Lianna!"
Lianna froze.
Vy continued, through the blood building up in her mouth.
"TRAITOR! You turned your back on your own kind! When Enverna gets tired of you, she’ll turn her back on you just like all humans do to children of mana! You’ll see!"
Lianna’s heart clenched at Vy’s words, but she refused to let them take root.
She glanced at Enverna.
"You know that won’t happen," Enverna murmured.
"Of course, I do," Lianna smiled back at her, before that smile faded as she looked down at Vy.
Casually, she tore Enverna’s spear out of Vy’s body.
"I won’t listen to you," Lianna said firmly. "This is for Cynthia Taylor."
Then, with finality, she drove the spear through Vy’s heart once more.
Vy’s screams turned into a gurgle, and then silence. Her body went limp, the life finally extinguished from her eyes.
Lianna stood over Vy’s body, panting, her entire body trembling.
She turned back to Enverna, who was watching her with pride and relief.
"It’s over," Lianna said softly, dropping the spear. She knelt beside Enverna again, taking her uninjured hand. "We’re safe now."
Enverna nodded, leaning against Lianna.
"Together," she murmured, her voice filled with love and exhaustion. "We did it together."
They stayed like that for a moment, holding onto each other amidst the ruins of their battlefield.
But, Lianna wasn’t entirely correct.
Things weren’t over just yet.
Her phone buzzed.
A little clumsily, she picked up the call.
"Uhm, hello?"
"Lianna," Mel said on the other end. "Are you seeing this?"
"What? No, w-we just..."
She stopped talking as she looked to the left.
She dropped the phone accidentally, her hand going limp for a moment.
"Huh? Lianna, what...?"
Enverna also trailed off in much the same way as she looked in the same direction.
Fiendish energy was rising into the air, forming some sort of sphere.
"We need to go see what’s up, come on!" Lianna said, pulling Enverna with her.
Lianna and Enverna ran towards the gates, moving as quickly as they could.
As they reached the gates, they saw Mel and the others standing there, all eyes fixed on the sky. Strange, fiendish tendrils of energy were rising from the dead Fiends, coalescing in the air above them.
The sight was both mesmerizing and terrifying.
"What’s happening?" Lianna asked, her voice barely above a whisper.
Mel turned to her, worry etched on her face.
"I don’t know, but it’s probably not good. Look!"
The energy continued to gather, forming a massive, pulsating orb in the sky. As they watched, the orb began to take shape, becoming an enormous, menacing eyeball.
That same eyeball Lianna had seen before. Only, now, it was manifesting in the real world, for everyone to see.
[Saren,] she realized. [He’s taking shape... even though Vy lost?]
Lianna felt a sudden, overwhelming surge of visions.
Flashes of another timeline, another reality where they had failed. In that timeline, they hadn’t been able to prevent the end of the world. That eyeball had marked the beginning of the end, consuming everything in its sight.
She saw both Telvan and Garriden crumble, forests burn, and the whole world being reduced to dirt and corpses.
The world had been torn apart by the Fiends, and that monstrous eye had watched it all happen, an indifferent observer of their destruction.
[No, we can’t let this happen here!]
The visions subsided, leaving Lianna breathless and trembling.
A System notification popped up.
Quest Gained!
{Finish this.}
{Reward: Undying Love (Instinct)}
"Lianna?" Athene walked up. "You’re the only one here who doesn’t look confused. You wanna tell us what’s going on?"
Lianna turned toward her.
"This is it," she stated. "That thing right there is Saren. Yes," she nodded, "Saren himself. The source of all Fiends, taking shape right in front of us... This is it. It’s time to end this."
