160 Old wounds

"I'm not going to allow that!!" Lilith shouted while slamming her hand against the table in an act of objection.

She had just heard that Ellie was ready to agree to follow Detra on her plan to turn the girl into a fighting weapon that could defeat Mia in her current form, and was, very clearly from her face's expression, extremely against that idea.

"It's not your decision to make," East noted.

"She's just a kid!! she doesn't know what she's saying!!" Lilith mentioned while glaring at Detra, "She doesn't know you like I do!"

"Sigh..." Detra placed her hand on her forehead as if she was trying to hold back a very strong headache, "This again... It's been years already, can't you just let it go?"

The rest of the table was paying close attention to the two women arguing, all with the exception of Ellie who was just standing in front of Detra as if waiting for their mission to start.

"Let... go...? Let go????" Lilith repeated showing how insulted she was, "You ruined my life and the life of five of my closest friends... And you want me to just let bygones be bygones??"

"Yes!! Yes, I do!! Doesn't matter if you went through some bad times, you clearly got better and we have more important matters to attend right now! So just LET-IT-GO!!" Detra shouted.

Lilith moved over the room to hand her son for Marcus to hold and approached Detra. Once she reached her she slapped her face with so much strength that the woman ended up falling on the floor.

"Evlin is not here to protect you now... So you be careful with what you say..." Lilith declared.

Detra just sat on her knees and tried to rub it off the red mark on her face before looking at Lilith again.

"You done...?" she asked.

Lilith came closer again and slapped her one more time, this time on the other side.

"You think a slap on the face can clear up all the damage you caused me??" Lilith stated with a heavy breathing, "Do you know how many friends I lost because of you? How many faces I got taken from me without ever even getting a chance to say goodbye? Even my own parents!! I had promised my mother that I would have returned home to celebrate my father's birthday with him... We were supposed to try and patch things up after a huge fight we had!! It was going to be the first time I was going to see him in ages!! I kept them waiting... For TWO HUNDRED YEARS!!!"

Lilith then closed her hand to make a fist and this time punched Detra in the face, making her fall down one more time. Claire and Joseph tried to contain their gasps, Marcus turned the other way, Leona and her friend were unsure of what to do, and Ellie just kept waiting in the same position as if she was in another dimension, completely ignoring the whole scene.

"You're right..." Detra admitted while spitting some blood on the floor, "I don't care about you..." She then looked at the table and gazed at them one by one until she stopped at Marcus, "Any of you..."

Detra finally stood up and used a napkin to clean the blood on her mouth.

"I mean, why should I? Clearly, none of you give a damn about me as well..."

Ellie finally moved her head after that last comment and looked at Detra.

"My aunt did..." she whispered.

Detra simply dismissed her comment and continued her speech.

"I may not care about you... But I do care about order... The order that I tried so hard to keep and that you all hated me so much for doing so... So trust me when I say I want to stop Mia as much as any of you, if not more!"

Lilith simply continued to glare at her, but now she was also on the verge of tears as the memories of the friends and family she lost began to flash before her eyes.

"By turning a kid into a weapon... Just like you did with Marcus and his father?"

"If it will get the job done then yes..." Detra admitted.

"You disgust me..."

"Tell that to someone who cares... Your view of me holds as much weight as the view of a fish... You all are nothing but children whining and crying about things you don't understand! I'm the only one who can see the full picture and if you don't start listening to me soon, we will be marching into our deaths!!"

Lilith was about to approach Detra and smack her again, but before she could do so, Ellie moved in between the two to stop her.

"Ellie...? What are you...?" Lilith asked.

Ellie gave a good look at Detra who despite being so mistreated still had only her goal in mind. Ellie could see that no matter how much Lilith attacked her, her mindset would not change that she had to do what she needed to do. She could see that Detra was a woman with a formed mind, while Lilith on the other hand was clearly not.

"Sorry, Lilith... But I need her..." Ellie declared.

"Ellie... This woman-"

"Is my best bet right now!!!" Ellie shouted.

This time the whole room was focusing on her. Ellie would usually feel nervous from being the center of attention, but the girl only had one thing in mind right now.

"If I want to fix my mistake... I need her..." Ellie explained while raising her face to look at Lilith with a pair of crying eyes, "Please don't take this from me..."

Lilith lost all the strength she had to be angry at Detra, and instead kneeled down to hug Ellie.

The room was once again focusing all its attention on the two of them.

Marcus could sympathize with Ellie's sense of guilt and desire to correct his mistake of not being good enough to have avoided this situation. He also definitely didn't want Ellie to follow his mother on whatever messed up plan she had in mind, but he could barely find the strength to speak right now while being in the same room as her. Memories of their time together would block the words from coming out of his mouth.

Claire and Joseph were looking a little lost due to not being aware of the whole history involving all these people, but they could tell that something serious happened between them.

Claire herself wanted to go to Ellie's side and try to help her, but she was at such a loss as to what was going on right now that it looked she herself was about to cry at any moment.

Joseph was, for some reason, very curious about the living stuffed animal crying over the fact he could not drink coffee like the rest of them and got very interested as to what was the deal with that thing.

"Can we move on them...?" Detra asked while staring at Lilith still hugging a crying Ellie.

Lilith finally released the girl and returned to glare at the former goddess.

"Very well... If that's what Ellie wants... I won't deny it from her..." Lilith announced.

"Good... Then we can finally proceed..."

"But... I'm not leaving her alone with you!" Lilith added, "Wherever she goes, I go too!"

Detra processed that information for a moment while holding her chin and finally gave her response to the black-haired woman.

"As you wish... Doesn't really make a difference for me in the end... No... It might actually be better this way, to be honest..."

Lilith then stood up and crossed her arms while waiting to finally hear how they were going to move forward with the current situation.

"So what exactly is the plan?"

Detra returned to her seat and took a sip from her mug of coffee before giving her answer as if she was revising her entire strategy and confirming if it would actually work.

"To put it simply... Seven days is just not enough... Honestly, at the current level the young miss is right now... I think we would need at the very least something around three to five months to get her ready..."

"But we don't have this much time..." Leona mentioned.

"No... But there is a place that can help us with that..." Detra explained.

"What kind of place?" Lilith asked.

"A forest where time does not pass and where memories are left behind... A place where the magic energy flows in the air with so much intensity that the very laws of nature ended up being bent with and defiled. An area so dangerous that only the mightiest of warriors managed to enter and come out alive. And they do it by facing their greatest weaknesses and evolving into even more powerful versions of themselves."

All the individuals present were quietly listening to Detra's description. The children had their eyes wide open while the adults were trying to think if they recognized such a place ever existing, and if it did, why they had no recollection of it.

"There really is such a place...?" Leona asked, showing in her face that she was very intrigued.

"Yeah... How come we never heard of anything like this before?" Lilith questioned, looking rather distrustful of Detra's word.

"It exists..." Detra assured, "But it is very, very dangerous... As far as I know... Only a small number of people managed to enter this place and come back in one piece... Two of them, you are all very familiar with..."

"We are...?" Lilith pondered.

"One, is the young miss's very own aunt, the crossbow girl..." Detra stated, "And the other, is my old champion... Marceus!"