Novel Full Chapter 717: Sacrifice
When Abaddon reset the timeline, Lillian, unlike the rest of her sisters, got to live a life that was exceptionally better than her last one.
She maintained her life as the nanny for Exedra, Malenia, and Kanami, but this time she never met an unfortunate and heartbreaking end.
Exedra had eaten and absorbed the soul of Jeddah in their first encounter in the prime timeline.
Even before he had become it, he had already sent a soul toiling around in oblivion. Meaning reality re-wrote itself as if that particular chess piece was never on the board.
Lillian got to live a busy, but otherwise happy life as a worker in the castle.
Although she was a bit bothered by the fact that she was single that entire time… She would later find out that her future husband was paying his baby sister to light the butts of anyone who approached her on fire.
Years later, he insisted that they were the best butterscotches he’d ever spent.
It wasn’t until Exedra got over his initial divorce with Sif, and married Lailah and Bekka that he formally asked Lillian for her hand in marriage as well.
Lillian loved being married immensely, and it helped that she was married to the most doting and passionate man imaginable.
As the number of partners in their bed grew, and the amount of children in their family exploded, Lillian felt happier and more fulfilled everyday.
It may not have been the grandest ambition, but Lillian was a simple woman.
But she still wanted to carry her own little bundle of joy and bring a new life into her family.
She was so excited to come here and collect her child.
Only then could she say that the second life her husband had accidentally given her was absolutely perfect from start to present.
But it didn’t seem as if she was ever going to get what she wanted.
Because right now, she was looking at the body of her precious child as it stood on death’s doorstep. Too weak and powerless to even lift up it’s head.
She broke.
Lillian wasn’t aware of just how loudly that she was screaming. Or even of the fact that she was screaming at all. She was only aware of the dribbling blackness obscuring her vision.
But such a thing only played a part in upsetting her even more.
In the far back of her mind, she was afraid that if she took her eyes off her child for even a moment, the flicker of life it was holding onto would be blown away.
Grieving, maddened, and delirious, Lillian dove into the gorge in front of her.
She didn’t hear the familiar voices calling out to her from behind as they tried to get her to slow down.
All that she could think about is what might’ve happened if she didn’t get to her child quick enough.
Her orange hands developed an armored exoskeleton similar to the clawed shell of a crustacean.
Lillian landed atop the barrier and she could feel some kind of force trying to repel her and even harm her body.
But Abaddon shares his immunity to weaponry or magic originating from heaven with his wives.
So the only agony Lillian was feeling resulted from her inability to actually reach her child.
She must have bashed her claws against the barrier a thousand times in the span of a second, but it never showed signs of giving way.
Growing frustrated, Lillian took swift and decisive action.
She returned her hands to normal and sharpened the finely honed nails on her fingers.
With black tears still running down her face, Lillian plunged her hand into her own chest.
She pulled her own heart out of her chest and tore it to shreds; allowing her blood to spill over the floor.
Like Camazotz, Lillian is a deity of sacrifice.
Only her powers work much differently than his do.
Where the bat god uses his divinity to preside over sacrificial rituals and feast on the accumulated energy produced, Lillian does not possess his sight, nor have a taste for his sustenance.
The empress of adaptation makes her own sacrifices to accomplish a variety of strange effects and create new phenomena.
Depending on what is sacrificed, she can see bigger or smaller results.
She is able to perform these rituals with physical and metaphysical things, such as her heart, her hearing, or even her laughter.
She can get the things she sacrifices back over time, but to see the greatest return on her investment, she must make the conscious decision to give up something permanently.
After all, is that not what truly means to sacrifice something?
Lillian’s blood and the chunks of her heart began to glow with a orange-red light.
The golden barrier separating her from her child flickered uncontrollably as if it were undergoing a bad connection.
Not even a full minute later, the entire barrier came down, and she had a clear path.
Lillian fell to the bottom of the underground chamber and she saw firsthand just how grave of a situation this was.
Most, if not all primordial beasts are just like primordial gods; comprised of almost pure energy.
It’s the reason why so many of them are unkillable and have to be sealed instead.
Energy cannot be created or destroyed; only transferred.
In a daze, Lillian started walking towards the injured beast with her hands outstretched.
The light had already dimmed in her eyes and she seemed to be moving like a woman on autopilot.
She had nearly reached the fallen creature when Seras suddenly swooped in like a bat to hold her back gently.
“Lilli, wait!”
Lillian was so out of it that she didn’t even speak, though she did struggle to try to break free.
“Lilli, you have to listen to me!” Seras pleaded. “Do you remember when I was lost and you came to save me?? I’m trying to do the same thing for you now!”
Lillian remained unresponsive, but she was still fighting.
Which broke Seras’ heart in a way that she didn’t know was possible.
She had also begun crying at some point and was powerless to stop herself.
“Lillian, I know you’re hurting, but please stop and listen to me! Our baby doesn’t have enough energy to survive being implanted into our bodies!”
“What…?”
It was a crushing truth, but an irrefutable one nonetheless.
When the wives or Abaddon re-absorb one of his fragmented children into their bodies, they do so by taking back almost all of their power, and they can either keep it, or slowly feed it back to their children while in utero. Albeit with their own special touch on it.
The reason why Seras is insisting that they could not successfully carry Trihexa is because the energy it possesses now is far too little.
When Lillian absorbed it’s energy, it would no longer have enough to maintain it’s ego, memories, and it’s soul might not even be able to hold itself together in the womb.
There was a very high chance that Lillian could miscarry.
“I.. I need to-“
“Lillian, please listen to me! You can’t touch her or things will only get worse!” Seras reminded.
Abaddon flew down with Sif already at his back.
Seras shook her head at him to signify that she wasn’t getting through to their loved one.
Abaddon was glad that he’d chosen to temper himself… he needed to be down here with her more than he needed to be angry right now.
Running off to murder Lucifer, as good as it would have felt, was not important.
“Can you heal her before Lillian tries to carry?” Seras asked.
Abaddon’s vision flickered and he saw beyond the surface of his daughter’s scales.
As he feared, there was shrapnel in her body.
Though exactly what kind it was, he couldn’t tell.
“There are foreign elements inside of her body, I need to remove them first before I try. I need you to hold her down in case she becomes uncomfortabl-“
“NO!”
Lillian finally yelled clearly and more concisely than she had in minutes.
And evidently, she had so much to say.
“You’re not going to hurt her any more! No one is going to hurt her ever again after today!”
Seras paled. “Lilli, be careful about what you-“
“I am her mother, and I would put my body, my soul on the line just for her to be okay!”
Seras tried to cover her sister’s mouth, but it was too late.
Lillian’s body developed it’s own uniquely red glow.
Her skin and body began crumbling apart like dry, cracked clay.
Abaddon screamed until his veins were pushing up against his neck.
The last thing he saw in that moment was Lillian, smiling and as beautifully as the day he met her, and every day afterwards.
She crumbled into nothingness right before the eyes of her loved ones.
Her ashes were carried away by a chilly wind that carried her hopes, and the injured Trihexa, somewhere out of sight.
Abaddon held onto the connection that linked him to Lillian.
He fed her dimenishing thread everything that he had.
He scraped the bottom of the barrel so low, that he ended up touching a power that wasn’t meant for him yet.
And one that no one on this plane of existence should have been able to hold.