Solus started to cry, still clenching the Fury, but now out of affection.
The artifact was the only thing she had left of her mother and she held it to her chest like a baby. She fell onto her knees bawling her eyes out as the black cloud outside dissipated and the sun returned.
Lith arrived a second later, cursing the maze that all big mansions were and the architects that designed them. He found Solus laying on the ground, covered in blood. She was curled in a fetal position while she clung the Fury to her chest, sobbing.
"What did you do to her?" He snarled at Zoreth, turning into his Tiamat form and picking a size that matched the Shadow Dragon's. "Why is Solus crying?"
His fury surprised the two Eldritches as much as Solus' tears. Neither made sense. Solus was supposed to seek vengeance and Lith just to not care about her, yet reality begged to differ.
"Nothing." Bytra replied. "I didn't attack her. Quite the contrary, I'm waiting for her judgment."
Lith's seven eyes burned with mana as he examined the room and Void Flames burst out his bared fangs, aimed at the Abominations. His senses told him that their story was true, but his paranoid nature kept him from lowering the guard.
The only blood in the room was Bytra's, there was no trace of spells, and Solus' life force and mana were at their peak. None of it was consistent with a fight, no matter how brief.
On top of that, Solus was no match for Bytra, let alone two of Vastor's hybrids at the same time.
"She's saying the truth." Solus stuttered amid sobs. "She just…"
Cries and wails turned the rest of her words into gibberish, yet it was enough for Lith to calm down. He cleaned Solus from the blood with a pulse of darkness magic and took her in his arms in a princess carry.
The physical contact allowed the distraught Solus to instinctively share her memories with him and with them her burden as well. Lith's eyes went open wide as he learned the truth about Bytra and the events that had led Solus to her current condition.
He stuttered gibberish as well, trying to find something to say.
"Fuck me sideways." He shook his head, leaving the brooding to another moment. "Solus has forgiven you, Bytra. She says that you can go and that she wants to never see you again. As for you, Xenagrosh, we need to talk, but that can wait."
Lith darted out of the room before either woman could reply to him and ran like the wind to the mansion's Warp Gate. Solus never stopped crying or clenching the Fury and he knew that she never would, unless he did something.
Once he reached the barn of the Verhen farm, he opened a Warp that led him to the mana geyser in the Trawn woods and from there he Tower Warped to the Desert. Lith didn't care for barging in in the middle of the night.
Solus needed help and Salaark was the only one who could give it to her.
"What in the Great Mother's name are you doing here?" The Guardian said as Lith crashed her party and trampled the guards that had politely asked him to stop.
Salaark had no need to sleep and she spent her nights having fun. Being pregnant, dancing and partying were off the table so she had been watching a theatrical play while eating enough for two Guardians.
Lith had arrived in the middle of the big scene of the second act, ruining it.
He tried to explain, but there was no need for words. Now that they were so close, the Blood Imprint bloodline ability that Phoenixes shared allowed her to read his thoughts without the need of her breathing technique, Mother Sun.
Solus' memories passed from her to Lith, and from Lith to Salaark in a stream of consciousness that made the three into one for a split second.
"That's how you died, Ripha." Tears streaked down the Guardian's cheeks at the vision of the pain that her dear friend and her daughter had endured.
Before continuing that conversation, she Warped herself, Lith, and Solus to her private chambers.
"Why did you bring her here? She needs her family to recover and as much as I care for her, our bond is not that deep." Salaark asked.
"Because you are the only person that can give her peace of mind, Grandma." Lith replied. "Solus keeps crying and holding the hammer not out of pain, but out of fear. The Fury still bears Bytra's imprint and it only takes her a thought to retrieve it."
"That wasn't in Solus' thoughts. How do you know that?" The Guardian had been kind calling the sorry mess that ran through Solus' head thoughts.
She just kept replaying her own death scene and that of her mother, screaming telepathically non-stop.
"Because I know her as well as I know myself. Can you please remove the imprint with Creation Magic?" Lith asked.
"I can do better." Salaark took a small box out of her pocket dimension and opened it in front of Lith.
It contained the blueprints for a new hammer and the ingredients necessary to craft it by using the Fury as a base. Menadion had left them to Salaark because the Guardian was the only one who could use Creation Magic and forge her final gift for her daughter.
The First Ruler of the Flames had planned to leave the tower and the Fury to Solus once she finished her apprenticeship, something that Ripha had never lived to see.
"If I just remove the imprint, the Fury would not only be a piece of crap, it would also be a bloodstained memento of the worst moment in Solus' life. What she needs is a token of her mother's love."
Salaark called upon the power of her two cores, her own and that of the baby, to perform the Forgemastery without the use of any tool. Creation Magic first removed the imprint on the Fury and then separated the artifact from its power core.
Lith saw the energy sphere grow into countless concentric circles made of complex and unknown runes. Each runic circle spun vertically around its respective axis, revealing how each spell interacted with the others.
Another wave of Salaark's hand gave life to the second sphere from Menadion's parchment, replacing the first. Then, the Guardian switched the old runes with modern and then did the same with the spells imbued in the artifact.
Once she was done, the concentric circles went back to being an energy sphere no bigger than an apple. After that, Salaark split the Fury into its basic components. The Davross of the head, the Phoenix bone in the handle, the Dragon leather wrapped around it, and the white crystals etched on its sides and top.
Lith failed to recognize any of the ingredients from the box but one, a Griffon's multi-colored feather. The Guardian turned the unknown ingredients into more energy that joined the power core and fused the feather with the bone.
The white split into the seven colors of the elements, brimming with new power.. A final flick of her wrists put everything back together, giving life to a new Fury.
