Ms. Nine Tailed Fox

Chapter 23

A murky wriggling entity, its color balefully inky and odor gut-twistingly foul, nearly devoured the woman whole. It wrung and sealed the kneeling woman's body as if desperately wishing to penetrate and sink into her flesh. Like a pit of knotted snakes, a lair of worms and wyrms, and maggot-packed lively rotten meat, it constantly writhed and crawled on her body and hair, forming a nasty wretched mound.

If not for an eye, arresting with a faint sage green aura emitting from its emerald iris, visible from the damp slithery entity, one would not recognize it as a person, but only a monster. At a glance, it was perceivable that the nearly dying out sage aura was futilely fighting and clashing against the squirming black thing, desperate to not get swallowed entirely.

At once, Seraphina recognized that eye. After all, it was uncannily identical to her youngest elder brother's.

"Finally, we meet. Lilianne, the rarest of all aura wielders, a spiritual warrior," the little girl heaved as her throat and nostrils ached sorely in frustration, heartache, as well as outrage.

You have come, child. Finally, you have found me... An esteemed ancient divine beast, a nine-tailed fox, the voice which often haunted Seraphina in her restless nights, spoke defeated.

"Closer to the north, the stronger the pull became. When I'm with my brothers, it overwhelmed me... so much so that, against all odds and reason, my thoughts and suspicions revolved around you... In the dead of the night, I would sneak into the eastern chambers, sitting on your bed, staring at your portrait, sniffing and breathing the malodorous stench left behind by a curse like a madman," the child took a step forward, seemingly unbothered by the squirming black liquid drenching and drowning the woman.

Seraphina's heart was breaking, aching, and thumping in anguish as splitting bitterness stung her nose and eyes. After the incident with Aklis, it was impossible for her to not recognize the twisting thick dark liquid as a curse. The realization that her elder brothers were refused and robbed of the chance to fight for their mother and lost her in the cruelest and the most torturous battle crushed her heart like an iron boulder.

I see you are a clever and loving child. I am grateful that my sons were blessed to have you as a family, Lilianne spoke.

"No, the blessed one is me... it has always been me," Seraphina wished to smile, but the grand duchess's weary voice and slowly burning-out aura did nothing but moisten the roots of her long curly lashes.

Child, forgive me. Forgive me for leaving this heavy burden to you... Amaris has never lost the hope to find the cure to this curse, the same for my brother, Lysias. However, fate is what it is. The day this curse befell me, I separated and sealed my consciousness inside my body using my aura. I was afraid and disgusted with the monster I had become and could not accept the fact that the people who had died in these hands were the people who had always respected and adored me. But now, my time has run short. I am tired and weakened. As you might have realized, by the time my consciousness is completely devoured by the curse, I will no longer be a human. Even if a miracle happens and the curse is broken, it would only be the lifeless body of a monster that would remain. Therefore, child, before my aura is exhausted, find my body and kill me so that I die as a human. Please, end this madness for us all.

Seraphina took a deep breath to calm her jumbled emotions and toiled nerves. If a tear could lessen the woman's pain or loosen the strangling curse, she would have cried a sea and sniffled an ocean. However, she knew it could not, and the glistening moisture clinging onto the roots of the crimson curly lashes never fell.

"You are wrong. Fate is what it is until destiny intervenes... Lilianne, I am here, right here, standing before you, because destiny brought me to you," the child trod closer to the turbid mound, raised an arm, and reached her hand into the wriggling heap of contortion before sinking it deeply into its flesh determinedly. As she pushed further and further despite the resistance of clamping and slashing liquid that slithered on from her arm to shoulder and neck, soon her tiny palm landed on a warm surface. She rested her small hand on the grand duchess's cheek, feeling the warmth of the other and letting the other feel hers, and said,