Arthur Leywin POV (Erith flashback)
We reached the laboratory, where Iana and her colleagues had worked on encasing our kind. I followed her down the subterranean corridors until she opened a door on the right side and rushed inside, with me following.
The room was huge and filled with all kinds of metallic devices I couldn't identify.
"Get all the mana and aether ready to transfer to me, you have around 5 minutes" she commanded, as she put our baby Theo onto an operating table in the center of the room and then started to activate the various artifacts in the room.
The door opened again and another djinn pair entered the room.
"Ah, Per, good you're here." Iana greeted the man.
"Yeah, I got your message, good Idea."
"He's a colleague of mine, I sent him a message on our way here, telling him to get here." she explained to me. "And you must be Claire?" she asked the woman, who nodded.
"I am sure Per already told you, we are going to need every drop of mana and aether we can get, so please prepare to transfer all you can toward us."
Claire nodded and set down next to me and began meditating as well.
Per and Iana went to work on the artifacts and talked about what to do, but I couldn't understand it well, as their whole conversation was bombarded with terminology unknown to me.
The only thing I managed to understand was the problem of missing manpower. Normally they were around 8 people who encased one person, and now they were only two to encase five.
Well, Claire and I would support them and Iana has complained a lot about how eight were too much and that it would be fine with four people instead of eight, and how they could double their speed that way.
I closed my eyes and focused on my part.
A couple minutes later I could hear a handclap.
Per and Iana stood next to Theo, having placed a huge crystal, maybe 1 meter tall, next to him. They nodded to us, as a signal to start with the aether and mana transfer.
I once again closed my eyes and focused with all of my white core to let all the environmental mana flow into my core and from there to the two of them, as well as begged all the aether to follow this flow.
I could feel how the aether reacted. But it was weird. Normally when I tried to influence aether just about 5% of the ambient aether reacted, with the best of us being able to control up to around 20%.
But right now, all of the aether reacted. Every single drop of aether in the area reacted to me, but not only me, but to Claire, Per and Iana as well.
My eyes sprung wide open, and gave a questioning look toward my wife, asking if this was the work of an artifact, or some special spell.
Her surprised face told me that this was something she has never seen before.
"What is happening?" Claire asked.
"We don't know," Per answered her. "But let us just use this, while it lasts. With this we might actually be able to encase all of us."
Wait, did they not think so before? And why was there this weird look Iana shot him as he said that?
Per started to cast a spell, I could feel the vivum aether art taking hold of Theo, while Ianas Spatium spell moved the crystal closer toward Theo.
Slowly the crystal began to phase into Theo, overlapping with him. When he was in the middle Iana stopped with the spell and began using an artifact next to the table, while Pers's spell still worked on connecting Theo's body with the crystal.
After a few minutes of this, with Iana switching between the use of 3 different artifacts they were finished. Iana took the purple crystal, with our baby boy encased in it, him looking like he's sleeping, and laid him to the side, while Per lifted a much larger crystal on to the table, around 2 meters long.
"Claire, you're next," Iana said. "Get ready, relax as much as possible and don't fight it. You can't use any aether or mana during the procedure."
Claire nodded and laid down on the same operating table, next to her future body.
We repeated the procedure, but her operation took longer, as there was less aether there to be used and she was a lot taller, so the connecting was a lot more complicated, as Per explained to us beforehand.
But as the procedure took place I could feel how the invaders at the surface came closer, with the barrier shrinking and the single invader inside gradually completing his annihilation goal and circling in.
And I wasn't the only one to feel this, as I saw the reaction of Per and Iana.
Their speed increased every second, with Claire almost finished.
I was wondering why the nameless invader had already detected us, but then I remembered that I wasn't able to feel the experiments either. So this place has some kind of suppression system, that's at least something.
"Okay, Claire is done, get ready" Iana said, while lifting a crystal onto the table. It was a bit taller than me, with the same glow as the two before.
I laid down next to it, and started to clear my mind, and await the vivum spell.
After a few moments the aether reached me, beginning to do something with my nerves, while the spatium spell made me feel light. I could feel how the crystal moved into me, with the same consistency as some kind of gelee. As it covered my face I needed a second to resist the impulse to stop breathing.
As the crystal reached its location and the vivum spell was done with my nerve endings I could feel how my opened nerve endings were fuzed with the crystal, allowing me to feel the operating table once more.
Finally they were done, and the crystal was my new body. I could feel what the surface of the crystal touched, I saw through it without any problems, in all directions, and heard everything going on outside. I noticed that my sense of smell and taste was either non-existent or didn't recognize anything, and noticed how my breathing had stopped.
I smiled at my wife, to show her that I was fine, but I saw tears in her eyes. I knew something was wrong, it all went too well, and how she had evaded eye contact with me this whole time.
"What's wrong, honey?" I asked her, wanting to caress her cheek, but now being unable to.
"That's it." she said. "That's all we can do."
"I don't understand, what are you trying to say?" She once again evaded my look, wiping away her tears instead.
"She is trying to say that we can't follow you." Per said, while looking at Claire.
"We can't use these spells while encasing ourselves."
I felt like something hit me in my stomach. Why haven't I realized sooner? They said that we weren't allowed to use aether or mana during the encasing, why didn't I realize that the same thing would also apply to them?
"And even if we could, then we would all be lying here, waiting for these people to come and shatter us, and all of this would have been vain. " Per continued, also evading his partner's look now.
"Then why didn't you tell us before?" I screamed, feeling betrayed by their plan to not ask our opinion.
"Why would we?" Iana answered, crying now. "You wouldn't have agreed to do this, and all of us would have died. This way at least you can escape. You said so yourself, there's no escaping from here, at least not in this form. We can still transport all the encased djinn out of here."
I was left speechless. I wanted to scream at her, that we would have found a way, but she was right. There was no escaping, I had said so myself.
"You have to stay alive and look after Theo, promise me." Iana said, while touching the place of the crystal linked to my cheek.
"I will, I promise."
"We have to go." Per interrupted us. "Whoever is at the surface has noticed us. He is coming. We have a minute at most, since he is taking his time, but as soon as he notices your Spatium spell, he will be here in no time."
Iana nodded and began preparing her spell. The aether whirled around us three encased in crystals, while Per set up a Mana barrier at the door, to stop the invader for, and be it just for a second.
As Per guessed the invader felt the spell taking its place and rushed here. I could feel that he was too fast. I used my almost diminished reserves of mana and begged the aether to help me one more time. Once again every aether particle not already used by one of the other two listened to me, and supported Pers spell, while Claire used her Aevum Aether to speed up Ianas casting.
The door exploded and the invader burst in, and obliterated our barrier in a second. Claire focused her spell on him, slowing him down, but the only thing that this did, was letting his focus shift from Iana to her. He took a step and his spatium art allowed him to step right next to her, where he shattered her crystal with a single strike of his fist.
The sound of the splittering crystal was only surpassed by the sound of Pers's scream. I could feel how the aether warped around him, and how he took in so much of it, Pers Skin turned purple. He attacked the invader with such ferocity, as I had never seen in my whole life. Even the vilest beasts I have ever been unfortunate enough to meet seemed like a puppy against his rage.
And these attacks actually did something. As the asuran invader dodged the attacks, using aether arts on his own, every 10th attack or so connected, cutting deep into his flesh.
But as fast as Per wounded him, the wounds of the invader healed, like they were never there. "I commend you for this strength, but it's quite futile, isn't it?" The Asura grinned at him. Then I noticed. This aether wasn't just ambient aether, but it used lifeforce as well. I could see Per age at rapid speed, multiple years every second he used this aether art.
His onslaught of attacks only lasting for maybe 5 seconds, consisting of hundreds of strikes, was already at its end, as he was already reaching the end of his life.
Now the asura used a single strike to his core to rip it out of his chest, leaving Per defenseless and collapsing to the ground.
Before Pers body hit the ground the invader had already cast a lightning spell directed at Iana, killing her in the same instance.
I couldn't even react to the spell in time, try to stop it maybe, but then her eyes had already emptied out, while her body lost all of its tension.
But her spell was already complete, and I could feel how I started being transported away, deep into the relictombs.
"Oh no, you won't get away" the asura let out, and used another aether infused spell to teleport next to me, his arm ready to strike, but my crystal was already gone.
Through aether I was able to see his strike went through my afterimage, changing direction and hitting Theos chrystal instead, which was still materialized, shattering it alongside my hope.
***
>2k words
Again, I am sorry for the late chapter, I am preparing for my exams like hell, and had problems with getting this last section right and connecting all the dots. Now that the flashback is over and we return to the relictombs (and Alacrya /Dicathean soon afterwards) I will be more in my element.