When the Final Seal Breaks

14th Entry

Again, its been a very long time since I have had the time to write.

My phone says 3 AM, and I could use some math to guess how long that means it's been, but I don't even want to open the calculator app. I'm so tired.

Tomorrow we're leaving for the northern front. The reports of people escaping miasma have been flooding in, but for each person who made it out, how many of them were saying their family was left behind?

Orleris and I were called up to a closed council meeting. Navar met us outside and told us to expect to be told we had to go, but I already knew that's what was coming anyway. Even if they had just asked, I would have said yes.

Its time to stop running.

If I show up, maybe the Demon Lord will come meet me, and maybe I can take him out right away.

After the meeting, Orleris left to go pack up, and I stopped by Eloitte's workshop to get the condition of the rubies checked.

By her measurements, they had grown for sure, but not enough to try to chip off safely yet. If they were like small shards in my skin before, now they were about the size of small bedazzler gems. Not that anyone in this world would know what that is.
So, I'm the only one who will be able to push back the miasma. We have to push it back. We have to get to the city in the north. We have to take it back.

There are no other options.

We can worry about getting up to the Sky Domain after we've made safe passage for people to get out of the city in the north. Once he can't stay in the sky and command his little minions to fight us in friends and family's bodies, he will have to come out and face us directly.

I'm so tired. I'm going to bed. It might be a while before I can write again.

***

Several weeks of gruelling practice, and pushing himself to his limits, and finally Orleris felt he could make it up to the Sky Domain.

The morning of the day he planned to start his trek, not even sure how long it would take him to climb, he headed out to the training grounds and read the final entry in the diary. While he was waiting for the council members to show up, he read it over and over. He remembered that day like it was yesterday. He had been so hopeful that Lil could use her overwhelming magic to burn the miasma to a crisp, then protect everyone while they evacuated.

Instead, the fight had been next to a standstill. Any progress had to be made standing right behind Lil, who slowly stepped forward, and seemed to be out of breath constantly as she somehow eliminated the miasma without any flashy skills. Every time they made it a little forwards, a puppet would lash out at them, or the miasma would flood back in.

They spent about a month making barely any progress, with the Demon Lord himself occasionally leaping in from somewhere they couldn't see, landing in a tree nearby, yelling some stuff at Lil and sending a heavy wave of miasma at her. Every time they lost ground, and as soon as Lil had made it back, he'd show up somewhere else.

They had even lost several volunteers to the miasma as well. Any time someone collapsed, Lil would abandon her slow push forward and rush right into the miasma alone to pull them out. She would drag them to safety, then send them back to central on carts. She had briefed everyone on what happened if they collapsed, and watching her save every person she could gave them the courage to keep trying, but she reminded them constantly that they needed to be the one watching out for themselves the most, as if any of them fell and couldn't be saved, they would end up hurting others.

"No one can fall, do you understand me? No one." She would reiterate every morning. In the thick of the miasma, her quiet persona was all but gone. Nothing but a commander remained.