BXBX NOVEL Chapter 122: Legend.
"To whom, we are gods there is nobody to pray to."
Dina slowly ascended several feet off the ground and looked across the horizon again. "Who else?" She asked. "I have seen it before, when you need him most, he will come."
"Is she talking about the liberator?" One other god asked Gadriel and she smiled worriedly, staring at Dina's back and then turning.
"Come friends, this is more freedom than any of us have seen in hundreds of years, smile for them, accept their sacrifice, live even just for a moment, we were rescued, we were fed, we have been liberated, we are all free gods again!" Gadriel exclaimed with tears of sorrow and joy raising her fists to the night skies.
She took off running in the direction Dina had instructed them before, and after her was her sister, and then the others slowly joined in the sprint until their trickle turned into a flood of sprints until just one remained; oddly it was the god who had asked the most questions and doubted everything the most.
"Go on." Dina kept her back to everyone listening as their shouts and cries lessened. "Why are you still here?"
"Thank you, Dina of Earth, should I live through this, I will erect a monument in your name, and that of Ikaris, who did what we never thought to do throughout our captivation." He rubbed his eyes.
"Thank you, Hero!" He shouted on the top of his voice and then turned and sprang into a full sprint.
"If you say it like that..." Dina also wiped her eyes, unsure of what the next minute would mean for her, unsure of how she would escape this situation. "If you say it like that, I won't want to fight at all." She broke into tears slightly swaying forward and catching her hair into a ponytail. "I hope I'm doing the right thing."
Dina sobered up when her ears began ringing several minutes later, and the next moment she opened her eyes, Sitri was a few feet before her, bare knuckled and stoic.
"It is a beautiful morning to die, Dina Levina." Sitri stared, no smile, no frown, just an emotionless blank stare as Dina's pink mana radiated like a star.
"But you are giving away your one and only life for people you have just met, how is this sensible, I do not understand, unlike Ikaris you hold no use to the lord, your body will age rapidly, soon you would have been an old woman and died a painless death had you stayed behind, but now... I am obliged to kill you as an escapee."
"Why do you sound sad about it?" Dina cancelled the staff in her grasp and sucked in a breath.
"I am not, I am only confused, these feelings of love and kinship are foreign to me, they are stupid emotions that get your kind killed more than any other species, and yet you do not learn."
"It is human nature to be as cruel as you and your kind," Dina stared at her. "But us same cruel humans are also capable of compassion beyond the gods who create and guide us, the true heart of a human is balancing good and evil, I never expected someone as fucked up as you to understand that." She raised her hand, conjuring an invisible barrier around her body.
"Then, are you satisfied with your decision?" Sitri asked instead of attack, and Dina lowered her hands again. "You will never see Ikaris again, you will never see Sol again, none of your hero friends, you will not know what happens to the gods you are trying to save, what is the point?"
"Long after I'm dead and gone, Sitri." Dina clasped her fists and raised her defences again. "My memory will live on, within you as the girl who defied, in them as the hero, and in Ikaris as a friend, my story might end here, but I have a beloved legend that can never be erased by you or anyone else!"
"Interesting." Sitri raised her hand and pointed her finger at Dina. "Foolish, but interesting." She fired off a single black beam of mana from her index and with all the defences Dina had created it tore right through and pierced her lung, but before she even started losing breath or blood the mage slapped her hand over the sudden wound and sealed it all with "minor heal"
"Are you taking pity on me?" Dina stumbled in the air before rushing at Sitri with an unconventional punch which the demon-god easily caught.
"Of course not, I am intrigued by you, and slightly disappointed that you have to die here." Sitri raised her other hand and struck with the intention of blowing her heart clean out of her back, but to her shock, Dina grabbed her hand and held it in place.
"!?"
"What th-"
"Pulsar!!"
Dina opened her mouth wide and Sitri saw a flash of light from her throat before everything went blank before her.
NovelFire-exclusive-content
Dina lost an arm in the midst of the explosion that turned an entire stretch of desert into Molten glass within the fraction of a second.
"Fuck!!" The mage fell to her knees, holding her wound and casting another healing spell on it to seal it shut.
The corners of her mouth were burnt and torn, and her tongue was slightly swollen as well, and her lip had been split from the backlash of her own attack, because simply put, she released every ounce of mana she had in that attack.
It was the biggest one yet, and the burning desert was proof of it, after Sitri had dropped her guard she took advantage of that while preparing her spells using the second third and fourth casting techniques Arla had taught her.
*Haah
*Haah
The mage leaned forward with a slight chuckle in the back of her hoarse throat, surely that was a devastation; she wasn't sure but based on how far it had gone there was a chance it even made it all the way back to their royal city.
"That was a bit of a shock... No, honestly that frightened me a lot." Sitri gracefully landed in the cooling glass right before her with her hand still in her grasp. "I never expected that you would be able to use that terrible magic twice in less than a day's time elapsed, I underestimated you." She smiled at Dina's shocked expression.
"It seems you are all tapped out now though- hey what are you...?" Sitri became disturbed when Dina started laughing.
"Look at you, if I had known I'd have hit you with it sooner!" Dina laughed, standing and staring at Sitri's missing stump of an arm and her jaw that had been torn off revealing her teeth.
"You act all invincible, but in the face of real power you always retreat!" She continued laughing knowing for a fact that Sitri had torn her arm off in an attempt to escape the point-blank pulsar, and it was partially a success too.
Dina's rant was interrupted when Sitri's foot connected with and broke her nose sending her flat on her back crying out in pain, but again she raised herself and began chuckling, aiming her one good hand at the demon-god and chuckling.
"Come on, I still have so many new powers I haven't tried yet!" She cast a small explosion in Sitri's face as she looked inward at her dried up mana reserves.
"If I'll die anyway, I can just use the power Renia gave me to the fullest, it's not divine mana so it'll still work... But, even as I stand here, I am still afraid to use it, not like this, not now, I don't want to die here!" She ground her teeth.
"If you really are there, would you please just show up already, I need you, Sol!" Dina whispered. "Ikaris said pray, so I'm praying, I'm calling... I'm begging you to save me!"
"Are you praying to a being that is not even a god, are you stupid, you still did here -that changes nothing!" Sitri flashed her hand and shook her head, and all her injuries healed in an instant.
She took a step toward Dina who was barely able to stand let alone fight, and after she did the air erupted with a loud thunderous explosion, and the san around them began shaking and all the glassrhatbhad formed shattered and turned back to sand.
From the constant tremors Dina stumbled and fell backwards, but before she could hit the ground she was caught, and looking over her head shock struck her when she saw a pair of horns and a familiar jawline soaking up the warmth as all her injuries vanished and her arm regrew back to perfect health.
"I was already on my way, but thanks for calling out to me, Dina."