It just happened in an instant. Esmeralda took the first swing, and I just barely managed to counter it with my magic. Her sword is made of magic. I can't possibly fight her with a metal sword. It would melt as soon as it touched the blade!
"I see you have some common sense," she said as she backed off after a few more swings. "And here I'd think you'd be easy prey. Seems like I underestimated you, Nalid."
I don't respond to it because I know it would be useless to insult her at this point. Instead I connect myself with my powers and think about the world. I'm trying to get myself to bring sadness to my mind to allow water to rain upon us, but all I feel is anger. Anger...
And destruction...
No Gunnhild... not fire. You can't kill something made of fire with f- actually. What am I thinking? Underworld fire is different than normal fire. I may not be able to kill her, but I can do enough damage to weaken her. My only question here is how am I going to get close enough to Esmeralda to properly do something. I can't do long-range shots or else she'll easily destroy my flames. I'll have to get up close.
Just gotta stall until she makes a swing.
I used some long-range shots to try and tempt her into getting closer, and I was also dodging the flames she threw at me. I had to drain her patience. If Kim taught me anything, I remember that Esmeralda isn't great with fighting plans. Maybe it'll be worse when she's getting mad or frustrated.
"What's wrong, Querido?" She asked while slashing her sword towards my legs. "Can't handle the heat?"
"If I could survive the Underworld's heat," I said. "Then I'm sure it doesn't bother me in the first place!"
Now is my chance. I flipped over her sword, and while I was still in the air, I got out my flames and punched her in the face. The flames sizzled against her skin, her shouts of pain filled the air, and she backed off, holding the cheek I burned.
It's possible. I can kill her!
"You..." she yelled. "You mortal!"
Before I could react, Esmeralda kicked at me. My aura appeared around me, but I still got pushed back. Just as I was getting my balance back, I was hit by several other speedy kicks and punches. My aura was keeping me from getting any damage done, but Esmeralda was making me exhausted by this unconditional use of a shield. What is she planning?
We just went in a series of hits back and forth. It was like some intense sparring match between higher ranked guards. Except now, one of the two guards would die in either flames or by a sword.
And at this point, with my exhaustion and weak powers, I was sure that would be me.
The heat had just gotten to me in a huge wave, and it disabled me for a short while. I knew my vision went blurry for just a few seconds, but it felt like hours since Esmeralda got a good chance to slash me with her sword.
I screamed out of shear pain. It burned. It burned worse than the fires of a campfire when your knuckles are cracked and dry. It burned worse than the sting of a scorpion. It literally burned my skin!
I looked at my wound and saw that it wasn't bleeding. By Ether, she cauterized the wound!
"The swords from the Underworld are made from fire," she said. "They are a sword but have the flames' properties."
Esmeralda kept going at me, exhausting me and my aura's shield more and more until I was on the ground. I kept countering her attacks, but it was getting to be too much. She was immortal with me not having an Underworld sword.
"Oh, you are becoming so weak!" She said with glee. "Just like your son in the Underworld."
I felt the world stop at that statement. "What did you just say?"
"Oh, your son, Alex?" She smirked, knowing that the subject irked me. "He's a slave to the Demon Souls. Poor thing. He's so weak and innocent against him. But oh my, would he have grown up to be a handsome man."
"What do you mean by that?"
"I mean that he, like many other children of the Underworld, are sex slaves. The Demon Lord allows his Generals and other soldiers to make them into adults and do whatever they please."
The thought of that makes me sick and abused. My child has been used as a sex slave for years?! Who on earth would be so disgusting as to think of a child in that way?
Esmeralda then ran a finger down my face and down my neck. "Don't worry. No one harmed your son in that way. That is, after the Demon Lord made him off limits."
"Like that is suppose to make me feel better."
Build up the rage, Nalid. Build it up.
"You should feel grateful!" She yelled. "He was good while he lasted. I was one of the few people that actually got a taste of what he would've been."
And my anger broke.
I kicked Esmeralda's chest to get her off of me. I quickly shot fire towards her, burning her hands, arms, and legs in the process. I quickly made her get up as I punched her with as much force as I had. She went flying across the battle fueled and into the trees.
However they were set on fire and uprooted from the ground. Esmeralda came out from behind them, levitating with pure anger. She growled as she sent the trees towards me in fury. I tried to dodge them all, but a branch from one of them hit me and left a scar and me falling to the ground.
"You can't win this fight, Nalid," Esmeralda laughed while floating over me. "You can't even control your own powers! No matter how much effort you put into it, you will always be weak! You are nothing like you ancestor, and you never will be!"
I caught her in the corner of my eye readying a ball of fire with a punch. Just then, everything seemed to go in slow motion. The flames slowly crackled around the two of us, and my hair blew slowly within the wind that was forming. I looked at Esmeralda in her crimson eyes once more. She was right. I wasn't like my ancestor.
My ancestor knew of her powers since the day she was born. I only knew of mine a few months ago. My ancestor had practiced controlling her powers over many painstaking years. I had only taken a month or two to actually connect with my inner self. My ancestor wasn't a knight like I am. So while she used her powers...
I used my blades.
I quickly took out my sword as I rolled to the side as Esmeralda came down. Esmeralda's shocked face slowed as residue from her fire magic cane falling after her. I decided to take this opportunity to get the residue magic.
I held onto my sword so tightly that my knuckles turned white. I spun in a circle, catching all the residue from the flames onto my blade. The iron turned red form the heat, but after a while, it shone more than when I first got it. It had power in it. God-like power...
I quickly countered an attack Esmeralda made with her sword, and my blade didn't break.
I thought back to the moment that Kim and I had before practicing earlier that day.
"What if I am not strong enough to defeat the Demon Lord with my powers?" I had asked.
"You will be," she replied.
"But in case I don't?"
She tsked. "You humans and doubt. I never understand." She looked at the waterfall slowly falling into the river near us. "Just do what flows through."
"Meaning?"
"You dame, no? You use sword for years. You cannot kill Demon Lord like mortal, but you can kill with flames."
I was so confused.
"Flames? Isn't he made of fire?"
"No. He made of essence of souls. He make image to mess with enemies to think they cannot hurt him with fire. When in reality, he very vulnerable to flames."
"Does this go with those that have pledged allegiance with the Demon Lord? Seeing as they also can't die the way a mortal can."
Kim looked to me and smiled. "Smart girl."
I smiled back, but then another question came up.
"But how would fire work with a blade? It can't just magically go on the metal and stay there."
"No, but magical fire can."
"How?"
"Residue. Magic always has residue. If one put magic fire over blade, properties of fire will be on blade until cleaned. It always work that way."
"What is this?" Esmeralda shouted as she tried to break my sword with hers. "This is impossible!"
"How is it impossible?" I asked. "If a descendant of a God-like woman can be mortal yet have a God's aura, is it not possible for objects to gain the same affect?"
She looked at me with shock and fear. I smirked as I quickly slashed at her, finding all of her weak spots in different areas. When my blade made contact with her skin, she screamed as the sword cauterized the wound like with mine. I made more and more slashes on her until she was in the ground. I stood in front of her weakened state as she panted.
"You wouldn't kill me," she said. "The Demon Lord would kill you."
"It's in my fate that he wants to kill me," I said. "He sent you to do his dirty work."
I then took my blade in both hands and I raised it above my head and brought it down into the ground. Esmeralda didn't even shout. Her death was instantaneous as her body started turning to ash and her eyes closed on their own.
I took my blade out of the ground after she had disintegrated completely into ashes. The flames around me died out, and what was left was burned and destroyed of parts of the Enchanted Forest.
I took this moment to just realize what I did. I ran a hand through my blond hair and sobbed. Esmeralda had a story of her own. Like every knight, she had a deep dark past with stories to tell. And She never even knew the truth of how Kim feels about her death. How guilty she feels. She would never believe the story of how Gaia, however close she was to the general, died by he hands of the Demon Lord.
She died with much burden on her shoulders.
Come on, Gunnhild. Get your head out of this. You can't just hold onto your enemy's deaths like this. You'll feel guilt everywhere you go if you do this. But then again, maybe that's what stops a lot of guards from going deranged after battles and wanting more bloodshed.
"So she gone now..." a saddened voice spoke from behind me.
I turned my head to see Kimberlite and the other creatures come out of their hiding. Kim had a powder bag in her hands.
"Yes," I replied in a low voice. "But the fight isn't over." I looked towards the entrance to the Forest and saw the possessed people by the entrance get out of their trance. "Who knows what the Demon Lord will do now that his General is dead? I'll need more time to train-" I looked the untouched trees of the Enchanted Forest. "And to get better with my surroundings."
Kim sighed as she picked up Esmeralda's ashes. "She always wanted ashes to be thrown into Elven River."
I was a bit confused by her comment, but I let her mourn the death of her friend.
"I want you, Nalid, to go to Elven Forest," she said, giving the bag to me. "You must train there. Good combat skills with magic and nature." She looked down as her large hands. "While at it, please dump Esmeralda ashes into river. They say river brings souls, especially Demon Soul, to the Ether."
I looked at her and then the bag full of her friend's ashes. After all these years of being on different sides, she still remembers how her friend wanted to be transported to the world above. I smiled and kneeled to hug Kim. She hugged me back, and she held on as if I would go through her fingers like sand. I would miss her, too, but a guard's work is never done...
**************************************
"Where will I-" I asked but stopped my conversation after seeing Kim in tears.
We were in her home, where she kept most of her magical items: potions, powders, even pixie dust. She had just finished putting a powder over my wounds. The scars of the cauterizing sword had vanished, and my muscles weren't sore anymore.
"Oh Kim, please don't cry," I said as she went to put away her powder.
"I sorry," she sniffled, wiping away her tears. "You've been closest to child I've had in centuries, Gunnhild." She walked over to me and cupped my face in her hands. "For me, you leaving like how my son left for the war..."
I felt my heart twist with grief. Now that I think about it, she's the closest to a motherly figure I've ever had. My mother had died when I was young, and I was left with my brute-like father. I've never had that loving family atmosphere ever since Mother died.
Before my own tears fell, I took Kim's hands in mine as I spoke. "Kim, you've been the closest to a mother I've had. But I know that I will return back to you. If I am Jasmine Crystalline's descendant, then it is my fate to return to my family and friends."
She looked into my violet eyes with her amber ones and smiled. "Promise?"
I smiled. "I promise."
"Oh!" She said, pointing to my bag of powder which I had put on the ground. "I not tell you what powders were used for!"
I laughed. "No, you didn't."
She facepalmed and chuckled with me. "So stupid. Okay, gray powder I used back when making friends forget your powers. Purple power used to teleport them to where they were before event you want them to forget happened. Blue powder used for healing. I stole from Elf: Iznik Haelan. He pretty good with potion and powders. Finally, green powder used for enhancement. You can enhance any part of combat or self with it. But don't use too much or else overdose could kill you."
"Thank you for the reminder," I said, standing up. "Also, who else am I going to meet with when I get there? And which direction is the Elven Forest in?"
"Elven Forest is not connected to Enchanted Forest. Trolls and Elves not have good relations, so they decided to keep separate. You must go south to find. You must meet with Gryselda. She very wise Elf of Elven Forest. And best at combat. Better than me, even!" She then took my hand in hers. "I wish you luck, Fair Maiden. Return with the skills of the world to save us all."
I nodded as Kim grabbed a sack full of a bunch of exotic fruits. I held onto the bag's mouth tightly as I looked up to see Kim's tears falling from her face. I felt some of my own fall from my eyes.
"I will miss you, Gunnhild," she said. "You will forever have my prayers..."
"As will you..." I said softly.
After a while of tears and sobs, I grabbed my sword, shield, bag of food and powders, and Esmeralda's ashes. I walked over to Nag and jumped on his back. I rode him to the southern border of what was left of the Oasis and just as I was about to cross it and go into the real world, I looked behind me. I saw hundreds of creatures crowded around the lake and about the river and waterfall. Out of all of them, I spotted Kimberlite's bright eyes. I waved to all of them as they all shouted their farewells back.
When I looked back to where Kim was, she wasn't there anymore. I wonder if she's got thoughts of her son as she saw me. Don't worry Kim. I'll keep my promise and return to you and the others.
For now, I'm on my own...
Aye-ye-ye...
To be continued...
K.C.T: WOOOOOO! Yeah! End of book 1! The second book will be coming out during this week or middle of next week, so strap on ladies and gents because this series is moving! I know that I've been working on this books for over a year, and I thank everyone who has been with me the entire journey. Again! Next book may come It this week, so stay tuned! Everybody say bai! OOWAY! <3