"Salaark's palace is the most beautiful place I have ever seen, but I can't stand the thought of living here. Lutia is the place where I was born, where I met your mother, and where I hope that in a very distant future I'll die surrounded by the love of my grandkids." Raaz said.
"Don't worry, Dad." Lith returned the embrace. "Rena gave you four grandkids and I'm certain that with a bit of effort Tista can give you just as many."
"Don't get smart with me, son, or the next time your mother gives you the speech I'll side with her instead of you." Raaz said with an amiable tone while patting Lith's back.
"You wouldn't dare." Lith looked him in the eyes while swallowing a lump of saliva.
"Welcome back, Solus. We all missed you a lot." Raaz dodged the question, sending a cold shiver down his son's back.
"Thanks, Dad. I missed you, too." She would have liked to come out of the stone ring and greet him properly, but she couldn't.
"Son, if you don't mind, I'd like to go back to Lutia to instruct my farmhands about the sowing. With the ongoing famine, I'm thinking about focusing on strong crops that might sell for less but ensure a bountiful harvest in case of bad weather." Raaz didn't ask her questions, but he worried for her nonetheless.
After living with Lith and his lies for so long, Raaz knew that something was probably wrong with Solus and for some reason, she was hiding it from him.
"Quantity over quality. It's a good idea." Lith nodded. "Do you mind if I come with you? I miss our village and I'm eager to check if everything is alright."
"Of course you can be my bodyguard." Raaz laughed. "Now stop wasting time with your old man and go clean yourself up. We'll continue this talk after dinner."
Lith Warped to the mana geyser inside Salaark's palace, allowing Solus to assume her tower form.
"Fuck me sideways." He said once the transformation was over.
The building was full of cracks and some of the windows were broken. The magical aura that usually gave the tower a majestic appearance despite its incomplete form was gone as well, making it look like just a bunch of ruins.
"What's wrong with the tower?" Lith's question received no answer. "Solus, are you okay?"
He rushed inside, going straight to her room. The door was locked, making him sigh with relief and worry to death at the same time. Only Solus's will could keep him out so she had to still have her body but there had to be a good reason if she didn't want to let him see her.
"Do you need help? Is there anything I can do for you or do you want me to leave?" He asked while knocking on the door.
"Please, come in." She said with a deep sigh.
The door opened, revealing Solus wearing a knee-length sleeveless summer dress. Usually Solus looked great in sky-blue, but now all Lith could see were the bruises on her arms and the deep wounds on her legs bleeding on the carpet.
Even her face was black and blue.
"It seems that the damage on my human body reflects on the tower." She said with an apologetic tone as if it was her fault.
Lith hugged her tightly, trying to use light magic first and then Invigoration to heal her, yet nothing worked.
"How can you still be this hurt? We fought Quaron and Syrook days ago. You were supposed to have fully recovered. This has never happened before." Lith said.
"Because I never fought in my human body before." She returned the embrace, feeling his warmth soothing her spirit while the direct contact accelerated her healing.
"During our walks in the Desert I started to fade when I lacked energy, not because of the damage I took. After Zeska, I discovered that even though I can recover my magical power once I return in my ring, the same doesn't happen to my body."
Lith gently caressed her long hair, trying to make heads or tails of that situation. He could feel her wounds due to their bond, but what hurt him the most was the fact that she had dealt with such pain alone for so long.
"Why didn't you tell me?"
"I didn't want you to worry." Solus replied. "I guessed that only a mana geyser could heal me and I was certain that if you knew, you would have freaked out until you got me on one."
"Can you blame me for that?" Lith's voice would have cracked if not for the joy of seeing her injuries heal at a speed visible to the naked eye.
The bleedings had stopped while the violet of the bruises was turning into a healthy pink.
"I can't, but the fate of your family depended on your success. I wanted you focused on the mission, not on a problem you couldn't do anything about." She shook her head.
"You are family, dummy, not a problem."
Solus just smiled as they remained like that in silence, even after all of her wounds were gone. The tower had recovered along with her and now there was no trace left of the damages.
"I don't mind getting a bit hurt if it means that I get you to spoil me instead of working me to the bone like usual." Solus rubbed her face on his chest, appreciating Lith's good smell.
"If you want a break, just ask. I don't want to see you hurt ever again." Lith replied with a snarl. "The only silver lining is that we learned something new about your condition and that you slimmed down a bit."
He pinched Solus's side to emphasize the point.
"What?" The memories of the people of Zeska assuming she was pregnant made her blush.
"Well, now that you have a real body you also need nutrients to heal. Why do you think I'm so fit? Between training and sparring, I burn a lot of calories."
"Yeah, and "luckily" I have stored a lot of nutrients." She said after pushing him away.
Lith had ruined the moment for her and Solus's voice oozed so much sarcasm that he could almost hear the air quotes.
"Indeed. Chubby Solus best Solus." Lith ignored her outrage and held her again.
"I'm not chubby! I-" Between the honest joy in his voice and the pleasant feelings that she experienced, Solus's rage disappeared. "I'm hungry."
Her grumbling stomach matched her words.
"Of course you are hungry. As we always say to our patients, healing requires a lot of energy." Lith let her go, giving Solus a chocolate chips muffin that she wolfed down.
"You don't understand. I've never been hungry before." She said with a big smile and more crumbs on her face than on her dress.
"It means that either you really need to exercise more or that you got one step closer to a normal human body!" Lith opened his arms, but this time she punched his shoulder.
"Enough teasing me, you jerk!" She got up from her bed and walked briskly out of the tower.
She wasn't actually mad at him, just worried about a recurring feminine problem that she had perfect theoretical knowledge about but no practical memory.
Syrook twisted his tail, pulling Lith close enough for his head to lunge at the exposed upside-down left membranous wing on the Tiamat's back.
Much to his surprise, Lith didn't try to break free from the grip nor to stretch his wings as far away as possible. The four bones in between the membranes flexed like fingers, forming what looked like a thumbs-down fist.
Then, the wing punched the Black Dragon's face with an uppercut movement that closed his mouth shut and sent his neck back like a whip.
'You are not the only one with extra limbs, pal.' Lith thought while he exploited the recoil from the wing's punch to pivot on his trapped leg and kick the Black Dragon square in the chest with the other.
His talons dug past the scales and into the flesh, making Syrook bleed as he was sent slamming against the walls of Zeska. The entire city trembled as if it had been struck by an earthquake and several people fell down the battlements.
Before the Black Dragon could recover, Lith unleashed one of the most powerful spells he knew, Primordial Roar.
It manifested the aspects of all elements, using air to create a powerful shockwave whose strength was boosted by fire while water froze the target, earth locked the enemy's movements, light needles pierced their body, and darkness coated everything else.
The hexa elemental Spirit Spell further intensified the quake, putting the arrays that protected the city under so much strain that they became visible to the naked eye.
Meanwhile, Solus had her hands full as well.
'Thank the gods all that insane training Lith put me through allowed me to master all the six elements and to manifest the emerald streak in my hair, otherwise I wouldn't have been able to use Domination on a Spirit spell.' She thought.
'I'm still too weak to counter every spell with another, let alone take them head-on. Domination, instead, allows me to exploit my surgical precision in controlling mana flows and to hijack spells with minimum consumption of energy on my side.
'On top of that, the Yggdrasill wood and the Evil Eyes offer me the perfect cover. Everyone will think that it's all thanks to my artifact while it just gives me the strength to keep standing.'
"I knew it!" Quaron laughed like a madman while darting toward her and dodging the hail of spells from the mages of the regiment. "There was no way that you achieved so much on your own, Verhen.
"Kwart was right about you, hypocritical bastard. Despite your pretty words, you are just like me. You sold yourself to a Divine Beast in exchange for power. You are a Harbinger as well!"
'The boosted core, the Origin Flames, and all of Quaron's strange abilities are just part of the powers of a Harbinger?' Solus was flabbergasted.
She knew of their existence, but it was the first time that they actually met one.
Quaron lunged with his polearm, taking advantage of its longer reach compared to War. If Solus dodged, he would keep the offensive. If she blocked, he would spin the staff and attack her with the blade on the other end of his weapon before she could react.
Solus was still recovering from the exertion of Dominating Breakdown and even if she wasn't, her body coordination was severely lacking. Knowing all of Lith's battle techniques was pointless if she was incapable of performing them.
'I could Blink, but he would see my exit point with Life Vision and I would have just wasted mana. I can't allow him to cut the armor. Not only would people realize that Lith isn't here anymore, but if Quaron notices that I have just a deep blue core, he only has to exploit my lack of mana to win easily.' She thought.
Instead of just blocking, Solus hit the polearm with War with all the strength she could muster. Quaron had taken Lith's insane physical prowess into account for his plan, but Solus was stronger.
The full weight of a nine-story mage tower struck the glaive, almost ripping it off the Ranger's fingers and pushing him off balance. Then, Solus lunged with the Sage Staff, hitting Quaron's exposed chest and sending him crashing against the city walls for the second time in less than five minutes.
"Fuck me sideways!" Solus cursed her stupidity.
Her strength faded with every move she made. She couldn't afford to chase her prey around nor waste precious mana with Spirit Spells. On top of that, flying or Blinking while inside the array field would expose Lith's identity as an Awakened.
Luckily for her, she had no need to.
"Attack!" The regiment of mages didn't waste the opportunity that had been offered to them.
Both the Dragon and the traitor were now nailed to the walls, making them easy targets. The barrage of tier five spells produced by the one thousand mages deepened Syrook's wounds and opened new ones.
Blasts of fire, ice, and darkness shook the east side of Zeska. The people behind the walls screamed in terror as the shockwaves caused by the spells made their houses tremble as if they were made jelly instead of solid stone.
As for Quaron, he survived only thanks to the many protective enchantments of the equipment that his master had given him. No barrier could fully block such an onslaught, but he was an Awakened.
Darkness magic allowed him to ignore the pain from the burn and freeze wounds, keeping his breathing rhythm stable. When the mages stopped their attack to let the dust settle and check the result of their work, he was unscathed.
Most of his artifacts had their power cores almost depleted and Quaron had only a few uses left of Invigoration before it lost any effect, but the mages of the Kingdom had no way to know it.
"He… He's immune to magic." A soldier with a deep green core said before collapsing onto the ground from exhaustion.
He had given his all, yet he refused to surrender. He tried to reach his blade but he lost consciousness along with all those too weak from the mana abuse.
"Nonsense!" Solus could feel the despair gripping the hearts of the soldiers and she shed it away with a burst of light.
Her tier three Light Mastery spell, Sunburst, generated a beam of incandescent light that struck Quaron exactly in the dent left by the Sage Staff in his armor. The Ranger kneeled in pain, groaning and cursing his inability to use Spirit Magic to Blink.
"See? He's just a man covered in stolen equipment. As long as we keep him near Zeska, he can't fly nor dodge. Take him down!" Solus regretted not having used a stronger spell, but she couldn't risk it being foiled by a mere Spirit Blink.
She was too far away to exploit the exit point and she had to keep Lith's abilities a secret.
'At least now I'm sure that Harbingers don't inherit their master's knowledge for free.' She thought, glad to have an army of mages that made up for the mana she lacked.
"Enough!" Syrook roared as the violet light that still shone on his chest spread throughout his body.
