Death's End

Chapter 31 - Vanquish

She cast a removal spell, etching away at the enchantment layer that isolated her soul from the anti-spirit element of the array. Her intention was clear.

You would try that? Only death awaits...

Mirayoung thought of what felt like thousands of termites biting at her soul when she slowly removed it but as she did, she could make herself the array rather than being the heart that sustained it. This would do irreconcilable harm on the wraith and herself, and the question would be, who would falter first.

You overestimate yourself, wraith. Mirayoung thought back.

You're a fool. This desperation...will kill you.

You're afraid, wraith. I feel your fear.

You won't see through it.

Don't see through it. That was a third voice. A familiar voice.

Jerius?

This sudden intrusion disoriented the wraith a little, ceasing its assault.

Jerius could feel the weight of the titanic struggle in the minds of an archmagus and a sinister creature at the highest evolution.

He knew he had to join the fray when he woke up in cold sweat while a translucent barrier surrounded Mirayoung and the wraith that was also imprisoned within a multi-elemental prison. It became clear that the battle was far from over, and Mirayoung merely ousted him as a participant to protect him.

But he could not pass through the array. Any attempt only hurt him too in the process. But suddenly he felt a tug on his consciousness as if his entirety were beginning to be drawn into it. He linked that to the moment the wraith touched the array, suspecting it had done something. Mirayoung froze at the same time, confirming his suspicion.

He would almost disengage his mind from the array a second after figuring out how to first connect with it from the sheer pressure of joining a mental battle between the giants.

But he steeled himself, forging on. He was the disciple of Lyvia and the Prime Sorcerer of Nox, and he would shame neither.

He pulled out the sum of his life, the memories of his past as he begged from street to street. The friends he grew close to in Nox. The comrades he fought shoulder to shoulder with in countless battles. He engulfed himself within that, remembering everything and letting that be his everything. He let it paint over the canvas in his mind, allowing it to overlap with Mirayoung's mind.

The wraith was a consequence of Aderis's plan, and he would not let the betrayer of Nox get away.

Don't be an idiot. Be selective. The memories you use will be gone forever. Mirayoung shouted in her mind to Jerius, as a stream of his memories played out around her as a bulwark.

As their minds merged through the array, Jerius saw the memories Mirayoung put out to block the wraith. Of the many memories, he found one regarding her illegitimate birth to Lord Mi-Hwan of Ohai. He was surprised for a moment that she would give up information regarding her father so readily when he remembered Mirayoung was several centuries old. That piece of information mattered as little to her as the orbs of light hanging above them in the Dome.

The memory of the illegitimate birth was quickly consumed as Mirayoung replaced it with the memory of the hidden trip she and Lyvia took to the Icesia North, where they almost succumbed to an ambush by the Barbarians of the North. It was a trip to find Frost Jasmine, a mystical flower that bloomed in the coldest of the world; a flower once rumoured to be able to alter a single thread of fate. A half-truth buried in myths, of course.