The realm was merciful. What a sick joke! It drained anything to death, sucked the life out of humans who entered it and now, when a human needed her power more than ever!
It denied it.
I was the human's servant, its clay golem, I would fight and die with it and could not move! When?! From the very beginning. The snake that now charged that woman had been breathing a paralyzing breath from the start and I had bathed in it.
My body faltered.
But no matter how shaken, the human rose her hand again and yelled: "Pacify!"
The monstrous snake got hit mid-charge, writhed and screamed in agony. Its entire body succumbing to fur, its mind shattering in insanity. For an instant it looked like a tamed beast.
But of course, that devil had planned even that far ahead.
It shed its skin! The whole time, the whole fight, that beast had kept contained its monster heart beating with a new form and now, when altered by magic, it used magic to surpass even the power of a human!
That wasn't a snake anymore! That was a fire dragon!
Still the head of a snake but scales like charcoal that could not contain a body of fire anymore. It blazed! And fell onto my mistress.
"Paci..." She never got the time.
My arm stopped the fangs before they could fall on my mistress. Those fangs broke through the iron and shattered my arm. Those burning eyes met my badger mask.
In my state, all I had been able to do was block.
I could barely move, I could not cast, I struggled to even sense but my armored leg still had found enough power to drag me there and stop the hit!
I would not let you! Not here! Not ever!
It shrieked. Dread! A sound spell that passed through me without effect to blast the human. She started to scream. She fell and put her hands on her hair, pulled hard enough to undo her bun.
All around her the slaves went insane.
Pacification, at the end of the day, was just a spell. To stabilize it, it depended on its caster. And now that she was so distressed, that spell had weakened. Those monsters remembered what they were.
But a few broke ranks and attacked the snake. A few still charged for their mistress.
By themselves, they were no match for that beast.
Frost tried to paralyze the snake, trails of it hitting its body in vain. The lynx was plunging on its head, only to be hit and sent flying away. Then the whole snake body moved like fire, slithered through their scattered ranks and snatched a lizard.
Greyhounds. Back when humans ruled the realm, they preferred living slaves to golems. Infinitely less obedient, infinitely more alive. There were orcs, werewolves and, among others, lizardmen. When the calamity hit, most of those slaves got wiped out.
Orcs somehow endured on two legs. Lizardmen took the route of devolution, adapted into rocky beasts. By numbers and lifespan that proved the better choice.
That was why I was watching a lizard being absorbed.
Not just eaten; the snake kept it in its mouth until the body crumbled like salt. That was how that monster had survived this whole time. By absorbing way more and consuming way less. How it hard learned to do that was beyond me.
I was getting up. Paralysis could only last so long on a clay golem.
The scream of a mammoth preceded its fall. The snake stopped on it long enough to feed while the others regrouped around it. They had by now understood they were outmatched.
And still they attacked.
"Koko... Chibi..." The human behind me was breaking off her spellbound dread. Her eyes still trembled with fear. "Tama..."
The tail's blazing tail mowed them in one swing, then the snake's head rammed in their midst, sending them flying and pursuing one.
The maw opened wide on the sky lynx.
My mistress screamed: "Sora!"
And the fangs snapped. Then lightning thundered in the snake's mouth, forcing it to open wide. Arcs of light rode down along the flames, on the whole body, tearing through with equal fury.
The sky lynx had evolved again. It now resembled a bear more than a cat, yet still had its winter coat and a crest of fur running down the back, along with a buzzing tail.
A heat ray escaped the snake's throat, forcing the sky lynx back.
Both were reeling after this exchange.
"Kaele!" The lynx yelled. "Protect Yuitsu!"
Holy spears.
I could do three things at once. One, calm the whole crowd of monsters about to be unchained by taking mana from them. Two, cast magic despite the lingering paralysis through sacrifice. Three, get loose on that damned devil of a snake!
Fourteen magic double triangles appeared all across the sky, each brimming with cosmic light. The monster knew it was pointless to even try to flee and simply braced.
Each triangle fired spear after spear of blinding light that arched back to trounce the devil! A hundred holes torn and counting! If that thing screamed, the magic potency was too high for anyone to hear.
All that was left was its wriggling shape shredded in overwhelming light.
That was fine. Using so much magic was fine. You could neither create nor destroy magic. It simply flowed. Whatever I lost here would simply wane in the meadow. So it was fine to be a bit reckless from time to time.
But when the skylight came back and things settled, in the scorched earth my enemy was gone.
Oh, it had been hit, it had been absolutely wrecked.
But just as it had used shedding to resist the pacification, it had molted to escape death. I knew that was its trick. To take the least it could salvage and retreat.
It didn't feel like a victory. Even though the whole meadow burst into cheers, it felt hollow.
"Oh Sora, I thought I had lost you!" The human was hugging her pet.
And the slave, in turn, was pushing back, wincing: "Easy! Easy, it hurts..."
She ran to her other toys, just as joyful, a nearly thirty years old kid crying for those wounds.
"Are you okay?" The lynx-bear approached me. "The way you beat..."
"Show me your head."
Its friendly face turned into a frown. It groaned, looked away and then, almost obliged, let me put my hand on its forehead. Its thoughts loud and clear.
"I am stronger with the human. I need to get stronger. I am stronger with the human. I will prevail through her."
So pacification was powerful enough to change even a slave's thoughts.
Or was it the monster itself, in its prison, that was somehow defying its own nature? I had seen enough absurd things throughout the months to wonder. Of those two propositions, I could not tell which one was the more terrifying.
A mass healing spell ended the melee. Everyone had been wounded, not least by my call to sacrifice. I was still fighting through the paralysis, crossed the flowery fields and then the hamlet street.
High trees with layers of branches holding huts and cabins, platforms and hanging bridges, large open trunks and tree stumps serving as lairs. They had started to pave roads to their doors.
The ship lay ahead on the stream, moored and neglected. I walked on the ramp, went to the hatch and found the legged rapt pretending to sleep.
It rose its round head. "You're back!" I passed by it without a glance. "There was a lot of noise so I hid but I knew you would be back! You always come back!"
I threw the remains of my shattered arm near the furnace. Making a new one would take me forever.
The cute monster went and clutched my leg. "When you are here, it's like I am with big brother!"
I looked at it. Crouched and touched its head.
"Show me your thoughts."
"You won't hurt Caline?"
"Show me your thoughts."
It pretended to get tears but played brave and let me feel them.
"I am alone I am alone I am alone I am alone I am alone I am alone I am alone I am..."
"How long have you had those thoughts?"
It rubbed its tiny forelegs, embarrassed. "Since big brother left. No, that's a lie. Since long before I met big brother."
My mind went wild with speculation, on how monsters worked but it all boiled to one point: while their base nature couldn't change, meaning, absorbing mana, the way they went at it was truly unbound.
For example, for a rapt, being alone meant failure. Their whole survival strategy was to have someone else support them.
That wasn't called a monster. That was just an animal.
"Kaele?"
The human had walked down the hatch ladder in turn.
"There you are. Would you have a minute? I would like to talk. About... this whole saving the world deal."
I gave a last look to my torn arm and followed her.
Back to the lounge where the sky lynx, on two legs, was replacing the chandelier it had bounced against and broken. Even though the woman gestured for me to sit, I stood up.
She picked a glass of wine, emptied it straight and filled another.
"I know what will happen to me." She began. "I suppose... What will happen to the oasis?"
"It will vanish. The mana drain will reduce it back to a desert. Not even the hills will remain."
"And there is no way to save the animals here?"
What was that hope in her voice? Was she expecting some miracle?
"Not without ending the mana drain. Which you gave up on days ago."
She went silent.
"You must think I am selfish..."
"Yes."
The woman bit her lip. "I could accept it when it was just me. But now, I want to save the oasis. Is there really no way..."
"None."
I had unwillingly clutched the beads on my neck. I didn't care at all about that mirage she had built for herself. But this slow realization, the moment the human faced the abyss...
I could almost count the number of days she had left.
"You talked about ending the mana drain!" The sky lynx chimed in, hopeful. "Let's just do that!"
"Sora..." She let out with an almost maternal tone. The beast came to let her pet its head. "If I leave the oasis, it will only die faster. Right?"
"Right." I confirmed.
"I don't want to be separated from you all. I want to spend the rest of my days with you. Even if those days are short. Even if it doesn't end well. Those memories we made were the best I had since I was... ever."
"But it's tormenting you." The sky lynx complained.
"You goof." She joked. "Stop worrying so much. Oh!" She turned back to me. "Guess what I found!"
Unless it was immortality, I was not interested.
"One of the two final skills in my system is humanity! That's right, it lets me turn an animal into a human! It takes a billion points to unlock and a hundred percent relationship but I won't end my life a virgin!"
That cursed human system. It had done nothing for her. Just wasting her time in fantasies. I was not going to discuss her delusions about points and purity.
"You said two skills?" The sky lynx rose its head, curious.
"Oh! You want to know the second! It's soulmate, it's basically like a wedding. Who even needs that nowadays..."
"I like soulmate! It sounds powerful!"
"I am sure it is." She gently mocked it while poking the empty air. "But it also costs a billion points and I want my cuddle time. Plus, the conditions to fulfill are ridiculous and... what?"
She was looking at nothing, wherever her system was. Then her eyes turned to me.
"Kaele? I vaguely remember you saying you could not create magic."
"No one can."
Well, the mana drought could destroy it. Somehow. But that was as unexplainable as it was unique. Whatever her system could do, creation was way outside the realm of...
"It says soulmate creates magic." And she insisted: "Right here: upon completion, generates continuous mana equal to link."