Two sets of membranous wings came out of Solus's back, one golden while the other was black and upside-down like Lith's. She also had two sets of arms with the same color pattern as the wings and all fingers ended with razor-sharp claws.
A golden tail as thick as a leg and almost twice as long came out from the small of her back, furiously whipping the air in outrage. Long horns that resembled thick tree branches rested on the sides of her head.
The creature also had seven eyes, six of which formed a perfect circle centered around the seventh that was right above the bridge of her nose and each one of them burned with a different element.
"What in Mogar's name did you do, Epphy?" Silverwing had a hard time believing what Life Vision showed to her eyes.
The creature had one life force, two mana cores, respectively deep purple and bright cyan, and one power core. They all worked in synch, generating a mana flow much greater than the sum of its parts.
"We told you that our name is Solus and we are one!" Unlike Lith, the creature was lipless and had no scales covering the fangs-filled mouth that gave them a savage appearance.
The simple act of speaking generated shockwaves that pushed the First Magus against the wall while white flames seeped among their fangs with each word.
"I'm not going to fight you anymore, Solus. I yield." Silverwing let her white aura fade away and raised her hands in the universal gesture of peace.
'As long as they are fused, any damage I inflict upon Lith would affect Elphyn as well. Killing him means killing her and I'm not going to lose my goddaughter again. I severely underestimated Ripha's grief after losing Threin.
'She must have researched a way to not just bind someone to an artifact so much as to create a nigh-immortal being.
'I don't know if she planned to use it on herself or just kept it as a contingency plan in the case the worst happened, but if not for Elphyn's cracked core, Ripha would have created the perfect life form.
'The cunning of a human, the mass of a titan among Emperor Beasts, and the ability to tap into Mogar's world energy at will of a mage tower. Yet due to the heavy damage sustained by her core at the moment of the fusion, when Lith imprinted the tower, he imprinted Elphyn as well!
'It's the only possible explanation to them having the same energy signature and their ability to merge into a single being. I can't free her from her shackles until I find a way to break their bond.' Lochra thought.
"Then get the fuck out!" Solus roared and punched the First Magus in the face, sending her flying through a Warp Steps.
It brought Silverwing dozens of kilometers away and from there the strength of the hit kept her in the air until she reached the ocean. The First Magus bounced off the ocean's waves like a smooth pebble thrown on the surface of a lake, crossing a couple of nautical miles before managing to stop.
'This could have gone much better.' Lochra spat out a mouthful of blood as her jaw regenerated and her teeth regrew. 'I underestimated both the severity of her memory loss and the power she gets from the tower, but it's nothing I can't handle.
'The problem is breaking their bond without Elphyn hating my guts. Otherwise even if I manage to kill him and bond with her, Epphy might choose to commit suicide just to bring me down with her.'
Meanwhile, after getting rid of the impending menace, Solus was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. She had to deal with her past, with her present, and with all the feelings that Lith had for Kamila that the fusion forced Solus to be aware of.
"Fuck us sideways! Let's hope that this thing didn't make Lith's life force worse." It was the first time that they used Solus's body as a base for their fusion since she never had one before.
They cast Scanner and used Invigoration at the same time to not leave any stone unturned. Yet both showed them how their combined life forces looked like, providing them with more questions than answers.
The black sphere had turned into an elliptical void, at the center of which burned a bright violet star. Countless smaller stars of different colors surrounded it, and each one of the stars shared some kind of link with the others and with the dark space around them as well.
The violet star received the energy from the smaller ones, amplifying it before sending it back, and they all pulsed in unison with the void. The darkness didn't just feed upon the stars, it also kept them apart so that each one of them could grow without colliding with the others.
'Is this a galaxy?' Solus thought.
'I don't think so. There are only stars with no planets or asteroids of any sort.' Lith replied. 'For what it's worth, I feel much better. How are you, Solus?'
'I'm a frigging mess. On the one hand, I'm happy that at least one member of my family is still alive and that she's willing to go to such lengths to help me. On the other hand, I want to kill aunt Loka for what she said about us and what she tried to do.' She replied.
'I can't really blame her for that. If you were my daughter, I would've done the same thing. Most of what Silverwing said is right and she had no way to be sure that I treated you as a partner instead that as a slave.' Lith didn't need to project a single image in her mind to make Solus shudder.
She had lived long enough to know what happened to those robbed of their free will. Quylla, the Odi's living golems, and the prisoners of all living legacies were an unforgettable memory of the madness that slavery caused.
'I guess you're right. I can't blame her for assuming the worst because it's the most logical scenario. Aunt Loka would need a long time to be sure that I'm really happy and not just broken by years of abuse.' Solus sighed.
'It's worse than that. She would have no way to distinguish between your will and the thoughts that I might plant into your mind through our mind link. Our relationship is so odd that it's really hard to believe.' Lith said.
'Yeah. My family thinks that I'm your slave while yours would assume that you are my puppet, like everyone but Tista did when they found out about me.'
'Don't get me wrong, I'm royally pissed off that Silverwing tried to kill me, just like I hate when people assume you're a monster because of your stone body. Yet I can understand their point of view.' Lith said.
'My family now knows all about cursed objects like Dawn, the Black Star, and the Golden Griffon. Every single living legacy I met tried to put me under their spell and my family wouldn't trust my word about you being different.
'On top of that, we are both humans, so everyone who loves one of us will always assume the worst about the other since we could be subjected to mind control.'
