Chapter 102 - Among Saints - Gion's Act

Long ago, when there were still no islands floating in the sky and the Kastigo continent was burning in a millenary war between races, four youngs traveled together on an adventure.

They were guided by their desires and dreams, fighting anyone who oppressed the weakest. These youngs became a force to be feared as they accumulated deeds and heroes from forgotten tales and songs, and eventually became saints without even knowing what made them worthy of being such existences.

Their names, Gion, Lanar, Nimo and Ytria, were chanted in all directions when they ended the war and later these names were cursed by the very people who had worshiped them. But that was only after they found the place where a goddess was sealed.

In the village where Ytria was born, were a very old legend that told of a goddess who was banished and sealed in the distant lands to the north of the continent. But the legend ended there, it said nothing about why she was punished or her alignment, and this always piqued Ytria's interest, making the girl spend the three years she was in the school town, researching seals, gods and magic.

Uran, a lone goddess, abandoned by her own family and locked by her own mother in an eternal prison.

Ytria found the goddess's situation rather sad and cruel, and wanted to help the miserable existence that was that goddess. With the help of Gion and Nimo, Ytria managed to recreate one of the keys to the goddess's seal.

The goddess was so happy that, after countless years of silence and whining, she could hear someone else's voice and being such a miserable existence, when the four young saints found her, she gifted them so that one day they might return.

Lanar would never miss with his bow a target he could see and in addition to having the best sword skill in the world, he could use every skill he had seen only once.

Nimo would have the wisdom to use any magic and the world would provide her with the mana needed if she lacked mana, thus guiding her race to peace as she had always wanted.

To Ytria, her favourite, the one gifted with a dark power hitherto dormant, Uran gave her power.

As for Gion, he didn't want power. Gion had always been a scholar, he grew up in a school town for fifteen years and learned to question the existence of everything.

He wanted to know more, but his life was short or so he thought, as there was no one to teach them that time for them no longer mattered.

With this thirst for knowledge, Gion wanted time instead of wisdom. He didn't want easy wisdom, there was no fun in gaining knowledge that way, he was a scholar and as such, he wanted to strive to have that knowledge. But to do it he needed time and in his ignorance, asked what he would regret bitterly having asked.

"I want immortality!"

Uran was a goddess, but her stigma was the end, the utter destruction of everything. It would be impossible for her to create something without end, besides, she felt affronted to have her gift rejected by a mere human.

"You will die, but you will always come back after such a painful death like a phoenix. When one day you look for death, it will turn its back to you, you will see everyone you love die and only the one who holds the sword can kill you ."

Uran was merciless like any other god and as a form of punishment, she distorted the request of Gion who had been satisfied without knowing the reality of Uran's words.

"All I ask in return is for you to come back here more often and talk to me." Uran asked and the youth departed.

A year passed and Uran waited, two years, three, four, five years passed and they didn't come back.

Feeling betrayed, the goddess used Ytria and brought the true essence of the power dormant within the young woman who unknowingly was used to send a message to the world that had forgotten her.

Ytria became the apostle of the goddess of destruction, the first Tormentor and soon the sweet, cheerful and smiling Ytria became a ruthless assassin, a destroyer destroying everything she saw with overwhelming power.

The young redhead walked across the continent decimating cities and kingdoms without caring, destroying the peace that the four venerable saints had built in five years.

The world that the four friends had built disappeared with each step of the Tormentor and not even the three saints together could stop it.

Ytria made no effort in her path of destruction. It was as if, while she maintained a static expression, Ytria's every move turned buildings into rubble, life into death and something to nothing, leveling people, houses, palaces and mountains under her feet without meeting any resistance.

At the same time, Gion was experimenting with homunculi and mana crystals that had lost their strength and were just empty batteries.

He had the idea of ​​using these homunculi to take Ytria's powers, weaken her and seal her until they found a way to bring her back.

The former, dubbed Neu, positive, and Eun, negative, shaped to look like Ytria, were a major failure. They failed to absorb even one percent of Ytria's powers and nearly broke, being saved by Lanar who lost an arm in the process.

Not caring about the failure, Gion returned to square zero and with the help of Nimo, he created Faena and Lhia, darkness and light.

They were a hundred times stronger than their predecessors, and while the saints fought and distracted the Tormentor.

They were using everything they had to at least survive, while Faena and Lhia took all the power of Ytria for themselves.

In the midst of a field of land that was out of sight, where it had once been a great kingdom, Ytria fell limp to her knees and sobs were audible in that silence.

"Ytria?"

Gion approached, the woman sobbing and crying to the point that her shoulders shook.

"Gion..."

The woman's tearful, sad voice pierced Gion's ears and squeezed his heart. Gion knelt in front of Ytria and hugged her, but it wasn't over yet.

"Not!" Ytria pushed Gion away from her. "You have to kill me! I can't live, my powers are coming back! Kill me!"

"But-"

"Gion, look what I've done! I destroyed Ellora! The kingdom we saved is gone! This power is controlling me!"

"But we can seal you and-"

"Yes, seal me after you kill me-" Ytria said and squirmed as she was invaded by a wave of mana that her body was beginning to absorb. "H-hurry!"

With painful expressions, the three saints did as Ytria asked. Lanar, still without an arm, stabbed her in the chest with his sword while Nimo made it painless with magic and Gion, along with Faena and Lhia, enveloped Ytria's body in a large crystal formed by mana.

They were exhausted to the point where they couldn't even cry. The three just sat around the crystal that imprisoned Ytria and stayed there, in absolute silence, but...

The silence was short-lived, Faena and Lhia had gained consciousness after receiving so much power and they were the opposite of each other. Lhia had won Ytria's righteous and brave side, while Faena won the woman's fears and feelings and was soon taken over by the darkness that came with Ytria's powers.

Faena, a lovely little child, had become a symbol of destruction just like the one who gave her life and Lhia wanting to protect what Ytria died for, tried to stop her sister and so, weeks of destruction kept happening and the scale got even bigger when the gates of hell opened and angels appeared.

For the common people, the ones being slaughtered in the midst of all that, it was no longer a battle between two people, it was a war between goddesses, an evil goddess and a just and saving goddess with their armies of demons and angels.

When Lhia saw that the rest of the continent was in danger, with all the miasma that escaped from the open gates of hell and corrupted everything it touched, she abandoned the fight against her sister and used all her power to lift the islands to heaven as Faena continued to destroy everything around her, wildly followed by demonic hordes.

As Lhia weakened and Faena lost control, Gion and Nimo used them as keys to Ytria's seal, sealed the two and launched them to the world below.

Gion isolated himself in the undersea kingdom of Sigma and with the help of the royal family, hid Ytria in the depths of the kingdom, Nimo isolated herself in the ancient forest of the elves, where she started a new community and Lanar built a kingdom, had children, grandchildren and as a Immortal, he watched them die and repeated his cycle of happiness and sadness until the fateful day of his murder.

***

The day before Lunnia, Fotia and Anemus left, Gion was once again alone before Ytria's crystallized body.

He watched the woman's memories being hologrammed on the rocky walls of that place and once again vowed to bring her back.

After millennia of studies, the druid believed that Ytria's soul had not reincarnated and was now looking for a way to resurrect his beloved.

Gion admired Ytria's beauty in silence in that great cavernous room. His mournful eyes had a gentle and affectionate glow. He loved her for over four thousand years without ever having said a word, without ever having the opportunity to say how much he loved her and that love never faded.

The druid tried to kill himself thousands or millions of times so that he would join Ytria, but he only felt pain in his countless deaths and not even Lanar, who he thought would be his executioner, could kill him.

Gion cursed the goddess over and over again and cursed himself in equal proportion, regretting that he couldn't die.

"I shouldn't have asked for this..."

The man has repented again and again over thousands of years and still regrets.

"I'll bring you back, my love..." Gion whispered as he caressed the crystal at the level of her face eternalized in the mana crystal. "I swear."

Gion turned and in slow steps, walked away with the squeak of his dark green tunic dragging on the hard, cold ground, then the impossible happened.

The mana crystal where Ytria was a seal, that should have been eternal, began to crack from the bottom up with fine grooves.

Gion's purple eyes widened and his brows arched, his face heated and tears welled up and streamed from his eyes as his heart raced.

"Ytria!"

Gion ran back to the crystal that had stopped cracking and knelt before that eternal prison as he wept and desperately scratched the grooves until he painted them with the blood from the cuts that appeared on his fingers.

"Are you coming back..."

Gion's hopeful voice echoed around the room without him realizing, or more likely not caring, that it wasn't natural.

"I will destroy the seals!"