Chapter 974: Doing The Impossible
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Elayne couldn’t find a proper way to describe what was happening to Mercedes, but she would have said that the elven woman was becoming the embodiment of distorted and decaying time and space. Her face melted down and so the rest of her body, her arms stretched and so did her legs. Her skin turned of a translucent gray, green, blue, and red color, looking as if it were made of liquid glass.
Her body constantly glitched, showing distorted flashes of light.
Her stretching face showed a screaming, crying woman, Brisingra experienced utter horror as she saw her mother become something else, a monster. Or whatever could else could this be called. She gritted her teeth, preparing her Mana, which Elayne gave her endlessly.
“Mother… I’ll help you; I’ll free you from whatever you’ve become!”
“You ready, Brisingra? Good.”
“Run… GUUH… GRAAAGH!”
Mercedes charged towards them. Her strange body composition allowing her to skip through time and space, virtually teleporting. In a split second, she appeared above the two of them. Her long arms extending towards them as sharp claws. A barrage of powerful attacks fell over the two.
CLASH! CLASH! CLASH!
Brisingra barely managed to shield against the first two with her barriers before they shattered, the third attack was taken by Planta, as she swung her massive sword, a product of fusing Gram with Gaia’s All-Purpose-Tool and her own Divine Spirit Dragons, glowing with bright rainbow light, and made completely of divine draconic essence crystalized together.
Crack, crack…!
However the moment it was hit, her combined sword gained cracks, shattering in half! Elayne gasped as she saw the weapons forcefully trying to go back to their former selves. Her eyes widened as she saw Mercedes appearing behind her, her enormous claws grabbing her head and tearing it out of her body.
CRASH!
“L-Lady Planta?!”
Brisingra screamed in utter horror as she saw Planta’s draconic head being torn apart, her blood sap splattering everywhere… Only for a gigantic tail to pierce through Mercedes arms from below. Destroying one, while the other managed to evade and then tore apart her tail too.
“Don’t worry about me, Brisingra, stop your mother and tell her that everything is going to be okay!” Planta roared. “No matter what, I can take as many hits as I must!”
As Planta spoke, she conjured her magic, beams of elemental spiritual energy, thunderbolts from her horns, giant spears made of divine Yggdrasil wood, and emerald swords containing the power of the Verdant Green Domain. The attacks kept bathing Mercedes, yet she took barely any damage, her body regenerating back endlessly.
Brisingra kept running while Planta protected her, Mercedes continued erratically attacking them, her daughter conjuring her magic rapidly, as she created two spheres on both of her hands. She threw one towards Mercedes, as it suddenly captured her within a sphere!
“RAAAAH!”
Mercedes continued hitting the sphere, as cracks spread through it, but it kept her in check. At the same time, Brisingra shaped the other sphere into countless of giant chains, although they need more strength, Planta provided it.
“We can’t keep hitting her and we’re running out of time, restraining her is the best, right?”
“Well thought!”
Planta touched the chains as she fused them with hundreds after hundreds of Lesser Spirits she had already summoned from both her body and her Domain and Terrain.
“Now! {Divine Rainbow Spirit Chains}!”
FLAAASH!
The chains were reinforced and transformed, becoming ten times as thick and powerful, the moment Mercedes broke out of the bubble, the chains wrapped around her body while Planta kept raining down spells to distract her.
“GRAAAH!”
Mercedes screamed in agony and fury, as Planta panicked, seeing there were only 1 minute, and 42 seconds left of the Quest Timing! The chains wrapped around her limbs and then her chest and head, pushing her down and forcing her to kneel down.
We barely had a few seconds!
“Brisingra! Use that ring! I remember seeing she had a similar one, use that to remind her of what she is!” I told her.
“O-Okay!” Brisingra ran forwards as I kept myself in place, boosting the chains to be tough enough to not break right away.
Brisingra ran and ran, reaching her mother at long last.
And hugging her.
“G-Graaahhh… Ugh…!”
Mercedes groaned, as she looked down with her dead, melting eyes. Brisingra’s eyes glowed brightly, tears streaming from her eyes, as she showed her the ring.
“Mom… this is your ring, right?”
“A-Ah…”
Mercedes memories flashed in an instant, as she recalled that ring’s design. It was a ring her father had gifted to her long ago. It has been a couple of years since her father passed away. As long as the Ancient Elves could live, they didn’t have endless lifespans, and after living three thousand years, he died like any other elderly.
It was a ring he had gifted to her when she was but a little child, a gift from her own deceased mother, that had died giving birth to her. Mercedes looked at Brisingra. Deep within this memory of this time’s fragment, there was someone, or many people.
And amongst these many “people”, these memories, this consciousness, fragments of them left behind by time as it fragmented apart.
Mercedes woke up.
“Please… you’re not false, you’re real… I don’t care if you died, you’re here, with me… So please, don’t die… Wake up, mother!”
As Brisingra screamed, Mercedes slowly started to return to normal. The stream of consciousness within the time memory fragment started to go back where they came from, as Mercedes slowly regained the control of her body.
“My… you’re truly my daughter…” Mercedes muttered, hugging Brisingra. “I would have only given that ring to my own daughter after all…”
“Mom…” Brisingra kept crying, she couldn’t help it. “You’re back…!”
“I’m sorry…” Mercedes cried. “I’m so sorry for having died in the future… I can’t believe I have such a beautiful daughter.”
“Mooom!” The half elf and half dwarf girl started weeping desperately, as the world around them slowly weaved itself back to normal, as if nothing had ever happened.
Planta gasped in exhausting, as she looked at mother and daughter hugging and crying, she felt a slight relief inside her heart.
And the system window in front of her popped up, saying quest complete.
And the time left?
[0 Minutes: 11 Seconds]
“We barely made it…”
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