‘What the fuck am I doing?’ Eliza wondered. That she could still think was its own wonder. Her body was in a continuous state of scorching and regeneration, all while the viscous surroundings made it equally hard to move and gave her nothing to grapple. This entire process hurt, but it was still less than those nails that had rested inside her for 70 years. Although the thousand degrees surrounding her were far less pleasant than even the near-freezing cold water had been.

Everything was dark. Even if there had been light somewhere in this molten mass, her eyes didn’t exist long enough to perceive it. She was just hovering there, slowly sinking. ‘If I just stay here long enough,’ she thought. ‘John will come and save me. I’m sure I can survive a few days in here…’ Vibrations filled the lava around here. Evidently, there were bigger plans for this than to just seal Eliza in.

‘He’s going to create a volcano,’ she realized, a clump forming in her heart. ‘They’re trying to deal as much damage to the Guild Hall as possible, so that motherfucker is going to create a giant, fuckass, destruction spewing mountain and just bury everything under lava and soot. And here I am too afraid of myself to stop it.’

She felt as if someone had slapped her. Words echoed in her mind along with it. “You’re never going to accomplish anything.”

The words came from a tall man with a salt and pepper beard. His eyes were brown and his stature far less imposing. Objectively, he was nothing compared to Lakamun. To a seven-year-old Eliza, her father was the scariest man in the world. Especially when he was in a drunken rage, like today. He was a coherent drunk, able to talk properly and walk straight. Just his emotions, those boiled over completely.

Eliza didn’t know why her father had started beating her one day. Looking back at it, it may have been that her mother had an affair and that this man wasn’t actually her father. That he had found out and consequently started drinking heavily. The times and their shared, intense faith had prevented them from separating. Perhaps that would have been good, had her parents taken the next logical step and talked about their issues.

Rather than indulge in all manners of sins to compensate instead.

“Never! You hear me!” her father spat out, the bottle of cheap vodka wandering to his lips as he left his wife’s child cowering on the wooden floor. Splinters of wood pierced through her dirty clothes as she pulled herself into a bundle that was as small as possible. If she just made herself unnoticeable, she had learned, then he might not beat her anymore. The taste of blood filled her mouth, she was lucky. Somehow, only her milk teeth ever seemed to suffer from these beatings.

She was cold.

The fire of the chimney cracked. Small as it was, it gave some heat on this autumn night. Only for her father in his chair though. Time passed. Eventually, her father began to sob and Eliza relaxed. Once he was crying, he didn’t beat them anymore. Eliza raised her head. The first thing she saw was her sister, hiding behind the only shelf in the house. If the situation was reversed and Cecylia had pulled their father’s attention first, Eliza would have done the same.

Because she was afraid of the pain.

Eliza looked up to the shelf. It was largely empty. Some herbs, a few tools, nothing fancy except the bible with the gold letters on the leather cover. A ridiculously costly thing they owned, so old that the words inside had been written by monks, not printed by presses. The cross lorded over them, standing on the highest shelf, looking down like a disappointed god.

She hated that book. The Latin inside was undecipherable for everyone in the house, yet her father treated it like it was the only valuable thing they had. Something so absolutely useless, whose messages nobody in the house even cared about. The urge swelled inside her to topple the entire shelf over, grab that damned book and cast it into the fire. Maybe her father would realize what a horrid creature he was if he saw the Bible burn. Maybe it would teach him that, in his absolute narrowing in following one teaching, his inability to follow all the others was creating a child that could no longer afford to be one. Maybe it would all become better from then.

All these things were nothing but fantasies. She didn’t do it.

Because she was afraid.

And her father sobbed, “I am sorry… I am sorry…”, but the next day was the same.

Although she was now near immortal, she felt like that child cowering on the ground again. It was so easy to do the same as her parents did. Just accept things as they were and let things fester. Nothing was easier than that and nothing hurt more in the long run. There was only one difference between then and now. Back then, her demon had been a physically stronger man that she couldn’t escape from. Now, she had the power. There was no need for hopeful fantasies.

‘Thana, do you even care?’ Eliza asked, pushing against her uncertainties. No answer. The barrier between them in their conjoined soul remained strong. ‘Alright… okay…’ If she could have taken a deep breath, she would have. As it was, she focused her regeneration and drove it to its limit. Muscles formed quicker than they could burn, a layer of blood and bone formed over her skin. Magic intensified, with every passing moment she wielded it with more certainty. Thana didn’t move. Didn’t stir. Didn’t interrupt. She was dormant.

‘I’m in control,’ Eliza thought, this time a joyful realization, not a desperate mantra. ‘I’m strong, I can help John, I can help!’ The magic reinforced her body until even the lava didn’t hurt her anymore. The earthquakes grew stronger, the volcano would erupt soon. Crimson, her Aura flared up.

Eliza burst out of the surface of the lava and soared into the air. Molten rock flowed or cooled and broke off her carapace. The Midnight Forest was no more, there was only a flat mountain with a large crater, filled with lava. On it stood Lakamun, turning around with wide eyes, just in time to see the blood mage’s momentum to reverse, gravity pulling her back down.

The moment her feet made contact with the lava, she moved. The Lake Alliance elite was surprised, but he wasn’t slow. His right hand rose, and with it an arm from the molten sea that attempted to drag her back under. She Shifted, right behind the apparently middle-aged enemy. Who met her with a swing of his axe. The blade failed to cut through her bone plating, but catapulted her away.

Helpless, she tumbled through the air. Arms and legs did little to stabilize her flight. A cracking sound, several cracking sounds. Snapping, squelching, growing, cracking, segment for segment, her spine elongated past her skin with blood and bone. A tail as red and white as the rest of her grew at a rapid pace and allowed her to land securely on all fours. Claws on toes and fingers grabbed into the rock of the inner side of the crater walls.

Finally, oxygen filled her lungs. It rushed past her gnashed teeth. It felt odd, somehow, that her lips were exposed to the air. A piece of plating was missing, but so was the desire to actually form it.

“Monster!” Lakamun shouted, his voice straining as another gesture of clear effort took his power. “Gamer or not, you should not be!” The axe whirled through the air, sending forwards a wave of lava towards the blood mage.

“Grrrrrr….” She felt the vibrations in her throat as she growled like a wild animal. An angry wolf, revealing its teeth, unthreatened even by the rolling force of nature. Blood filled her mouth. Mana gathered in her neck. Gathered air was pressed out of her in a violent scream, “RAAAAAAAAAH!”

The sound was a mere carrier for the raw force of the martial art. They called it a Beast Scream and nothing could have been more accurate at that moment. Forces met, and Eliza’s proved to be the bigger one. Collapsing backwards, the wave gave way to the scream, and the scream pulled with it drops of blood from Eliza’s mouth.

Crystallized and accelerated, they turned into potentially lethal projectiles. Lakamun himself found parts of his skin and clothes suddenly cut open as they flew past him like bullets. Threatened, panicking, the invader guided all the power he had prepared to destroy the Guild Hall in its entirety towards Eliza.

With wild gestures, he commanded the lava and the stone to attack Eliza. Laughing maniacally, she started running. Spikes of solid and molten rock came for her as her feet flew over the superheated stone of the crater wall. All of it too slow, all of it too little, it followed her like a track. A sudden sharp turn, evading the pit that appeared in front of her, and she ran onto the boiling rock.

A combination of her speed and another martial art called Clear Walk allowed her to treat the liquid floor as if it was solid concrete – just as long as she stayed in motion. Remaining standing in the middle of the crater, Lakamun raised more and more attacks. Shift carried Eliza from one place to another; with fluid steps, she moved along. Steady, her Aura flickered like blood around her.

She was dancing, circling, around her prey. An invisible line hindered her, the point where his ability shifted from partial to absolute control over his trained element. The sea of lava was waving, quivering. Eruptions blasted away under her feet, hands tried to drag her under, boulders rose from underneath and flew her way. She weaved through all of it, around her prey, circling, dancing.

A gap. Shift. She was in front of Lakamun. Her fingers spread out. One slash and she could watch this human bleed out like the filthy invader he was. His movement was quicker, had anticipated her attack. His empty hand rose to the sky and with it was all the lava in the crater pulled into one upwards stream that pulled Eliza with it.

It got her left leg. Enveloped it. Burned it with heat fuelled further by magic. Eliza continued to laugh, uncaring, unthreatened. The lava could have one leg. She just needed to straighten it. The right one, she raised high. The foot was dangling loosely from the joint. Suddenly, she brought down, the whole sole colliding with the upwards stream of lava.

The Seismic Step scattered the attack into a million drops. A sudden change in pressure caused Elisa’s own eardrums to rupture and immediately grow back together. Visibly, a shockwave spread through the air. Without proper grounding, the force catapulted her further upwards.

Yet, Lakamun was not done.

The scattered drops pulled back together, as many as the man could still gather. Coalescing into a giant hand, it reached after Eliza. A second time, Seismic Step, the lava was blown apart. Further, she raised into the sky.

It was no longer feasible to go after her. So far away from Lakamun, his control over the elements waned to a point where there was no way it could threaten Eliza any longer. Still, straining himself to the fullest, the man forced the scattered lava to coalesce into numerous tendrils. A hundred-metre-tall pillar of partly hardened lava rose from the now empty crater up into the sky, slowly reaching for the blood mage.

Who ceased laughing, finally, to look at the mere man. From up there, he looked like an ant. Like prey for an eagle. Her right hand snapped out of its socket, as the ulna grew too and pierced the skin. It continued to elongate, becoming straighter, but never perfectly linear. The smooth surface was interrupted by myriads of trenches, big and small, through which blood followed the bone from inside her body. While the veins spread over the bone and a tip formed, Eliza snapped the white piece off her own arm.

Although the bone was now disconnected, and her right hand reverted to its previous state, the blood on the grown weapon reached out with tendrils towards the network of the left now holding it. They met and the bone continued to change, accelerated even, until the tip had taken the shape of several oversized, stretched out carnivorous teeth melded and twisted together, blood crystallizing between where the gaps should have been.

Holding the shaft of the lance she had born, Eliza drew back her arm. “To achieve what it takes, I will immolate myself.” The words of power went past her lips as blood formed the outline of butterfly-like wings behind her back, adding the beauty of crimson flowers to her nightmarish form. “Bloodburn.”

The wings, the gaps in her carapace, the veins on the lance, they all flared up with blood red fire. It flowed around the frame of crystallized networks, burned away her life for more power. She had much to give. Distorted sounds, like violins, consumed the air around her.

She had reached the highest point of her ascent, the lava was closing in and she let loose the spear. The lance screamed notes as it descended. A screeching song of a violin, jubilation in the murderous tones as it, thin and uncaring, cut through the ascending lava like gamma radiation through a piece of paper.

Then, the entire tower of lava stopped. It quivered, just like the heart of its controller, one last time, then relaxed into the state of final death, collapsing into falling stone and dripping lava. Not long thereafter, Eliza landed on her feet, unharmed. Her eyes fell on the corpse she had produced.