Chapter 944 - 943: A Name Too Small

Elara drove her staff into the ice.

The pillars surrounding Sonya burst open.

Long blades shot from their cores, converging upon the small figure above the ruined shell. Behind them, the phoenix spread its upper wings and released a storm of crystalline feathers.

Sonya tilted her head.

The stone hand that had stopped Winterspine came apart.

Its fingers flattened into broad plates and swept around her. Ice shattered against moving rock, while feathers struck the gaps she had occupied a moment earlier.

However, one blade slipped through.

A shallow line opened across her cheek.

Sonya touched it.

Then the ground beneath Elara’s pillars turned.

Their next volley fired sideways.

Elara’s eyes widened and she jerked her staff upward. Her own blades stopped short of her face, trembling beneath the command that caught them.

But Sonya was already descending.

A stone slab rose behind her heel. She kicked against it, driving herself forward, and thrust a fist at Elara’s chest.

An ice shield appeared.

Sonya’s knuckles struck its centre.

BOOOOOOM!

The shield burst inward. Her fist continued through, denting Elara’s breastplate and throwing her across the clearing.

The phoenix caught its mistress beneath a lowered wing.

Then its hooked beak snapped toward Sonya.

She slipped underneath it.

Two stone jaws rose from the snow and closed around the bird’s neck.

Its lower wings flared with freezing white fire.

The jaws froze, cracked, and fell apart. But the instant they opened, a column struck beneath the phoenix’s breast and hurled it upward.

Elara flew clear, coughing blood.

Sonya followed.

Below them, a curved wall rose around Akaza, Virella, and Ammor, catching the falling debris without enclosing their view.

Ammor stared over it.

"My earth affinity is Low S-grade."

Virella glanced at him.

"And I cannot even begin to measure hers."

"What do you mean? We all know her earth affinity grade, or are you trying to say her affinity grade is much higher than before?"

"Look at what the ground is doing."

Another ridge of stone lifted, intercepting feathers aimed at Sonya’s back.

"We are demons. Our elements are Chaos-aspected. Humans wield Order through Aether. Here, the World’s Will rejects our power, and Aether fills the place of the demonic energy we need."

His fingers tightened against the wall.

"Before I can move the earth, I have to overcome that resistance. She’s still spending power, but the ground is helping her. It responds as though she belongs here. As though she was born in this world."

Virella looked upward again.

Elara thrust her staff behind Sonya.

An ice spear emerged from the blizzard, aimed at the back of her skull.

Sonya dipped before it reached her.

A stone disc caught the shaft and swung it aside.

"And her feet," Ammor whispered. "They aren’t touching anything."

Virella’s lips parted.

"She used to need contact with the ground. Now it is almost as though the ground is showing her everything above it."

He swallowed.

"How is an earth affinity supposed to do that?"

Akaza did not respond.

His expression remained unchanged. His eyes followed every movement without blinking.

But his stiff right arm hung beside him, and the memory of being unable to stand would not leave.

Blackmoon was already far ahead of them in terms of strength and power.

Now Sonya had gained immense power.

Why was he always the one left watching their backs?

He had trained. Fought. Nearly died.

Why was he still so weak?

A violent impact shook snow from the wall.

Akaza’s fingers curled slowly.

He did not want them to become weaker.

He wanted to stop needing them to save him.

Above, Sonya turned between two intersecting sheets of ice.

The movement felt almost easy.

She could feel the road below, the roots of the cliffs, and the deep stone beneath Frostveil. Farther away, the mountain continued into a vast, layered weight.

She had not reached the end of it.

And losing contact with the ground through her soles no longer took that awareness away.

Fragments of stone circled through the blizzard. The air pressed against them, revealing the phoenix’s wingbeats, the passage of Elara’s staff, the approaching feathers.

She could feel those fragments as clearly as the bedrock beneath them.

There were no colours.

No restored sight.

But there was shape, distance, movement.

Elara’s false tremors were still present. Sonya could feel the ice grinding where the human moved it.

However, she could also feel where those vibrations began.

The lie no longer concealed the truth.

A snowflake beside her unfolded.

Sonya twisted, but its edge grazed her forearm.

More flakes opened around her.

She recognised the attack.

Before the nearest sheet could complete, stone dust rushed between the flakes. The expanding ice caught it, revealing the hidden planes.

Sonya moved through the narrowing spaces.

One caught her shoulder hard enough to bruise.

The others closed behind her.

Elara’s staff swept toward her throat.

Sonya raised her forearm beneath it, turned inside the strike, and kicked.

Stone closed around her bare heel.

The kick struck Elara’s ribs.

BANG!

Her armour cracked.

Elara folded around the blow and flew toward Frostveil’s lower wall.

But before she hit it, she caught herself on an ice platform.

"Fire the remaining cannons!"

Light gathered along the battlements.

Sonya inclined her head.

The gun crews stood upon stone.

The cannons were fixed to stone.

And the formations feeding cold into the clearing passed through stone.

She did not try to overpower the entire tower.

Instead, a narrow section beneath the gun mounts rose.

The muzzles tilted as they discharged.

Blue-white beams passed above Sonya and cut across the phoenix’s approaching wing.

"SKREEEEEEE!!!!"

Its cry tore through the blizzard.

Feathers exploded into snow.

Elara’s eyes widened.

Then the stone around several formation channels separated, breaking the engraved lines.

Cold faltered along the clearing.

"You little-!"

Sonya’s next fist struck the ice platform beneath her.

The platform broke.

However, the real attack came from behind.

A stone section of Frostveil’s outer wall peeled free and slammed toward Elara’s back.

She caught it with a sheet of ice, only for Sonya to drive a second punch through the barrier in front.

Elara twisted desperately.

The blow missed her throat.

It struck her shoulder instead, sending pain down her arm.

She escaped beneath the phoenix as it dived between them.

Its talons swept Sonya aside.

A boulder caught her back before she could tumble far, then propelled her upward again.

Sonya scarcely noticed the sting across her ribs.

Something about the ground beneath her attention troubled her.

Earth.

The element.

Earth, the human world.

And earth, the ground under every demon’s feet.

Why the same word?

As a child, she had asked why the same element answered in different worlds, yet shared its name with only one.

Nobody had given her an answer worth remembering.

"That’s what it’s called."

"Stop asking strange questions."

At the time, she had accepted it.

But now the word felt too small.

This power had welcomed her in the Demon Realm. Her mother had believed it would answer even in the land of gods.

Why should its true name belong to the human world?

She did not know which name had come first.

That was not what unsettled her.

The name did not seem to describe what she was touching.

Under soil lay stone. Within stone were seams, grains, pressures, structures she could distinguish without knowing their names.

Her affinity reached them all.

And somewhere beyond her understanding, the same sensation continued.

An ice blade descended.

A slab rose to catch it.

Sonya drifted aside while a broken pillar curved toward the phoenix’s lower wing.

Elara shattered the pillar, but three pieces changed direction and struck her shield together.

Sonya frowned faintly.

’Earth isn’t your true name... is it?’

The question had barely formed when the bedrock beneath the clearing trembled.

She could not tell whether it had answered.

But Elara saw the distracted expression.

The Kragh was thinking about something else.

While fighting her.

Blood ran from Elara’s mouth. Her shoulder throbbed, and breathing sent pain through her ribs.

Beside her, the phoenix’s damaged wing reformed too slowly. A puncture beneath its breast shed white sparks, draining more Aether each time she repaired it.

Two attacks had come dangerously close to ending her while Sonya only had a few cuts and bruises.

And she was frowning as though some private question deserved more attention than the battle.

"LOOK AT ME!"

The phoenix screamed with her.

"SKREEEEEEE!!!!"

Sonya’s unseeing eyes turned toward the sound.

"This Honourable is blind. Have you forgotten already?"

Elara’s grip tightened until her knuckles whitened.

She wanted to answer.

Instead, she forced herself to breathe.

Anger would not repair the broken formation channels. Another volley would not suddenly make Sonya unable to sense it.

And waiting for the demoness’s new power to fail was no longer a plan she trusted.

There was one technique left.

A way to stop fighting beside her spirit and carry its power within her own body.

But she had never sustained that union without damaging the pathways that bore it.

Using it while already injured could leave damage no ordinary elixir would mend.

Elara looked at the crippled preparations around her.

Then at Sonya.

Better that than a grave.

"I had hoped to leave this battle without paying that price."

Her voice was low now.

"But you won’t give me that choice."

She held her staff upright before her chest and spoke.

"Elemental Spirit Fusion: Winter’s Rebirth."