Godslayer Lysette: Chapter 217

Chapter 217: Mirae's Trial

Back in Ciricu, Lysette’s primary body stood upon the training plain facing Mirae and Rayleigh, while Kiarra, Lilia, Amalia, Jules, and Katie all five stood to the side, watching the match as it was about to start.  The sun itself stood as high as possible in the winter haze, beating back the cool air with a glow that felt almost warm on Lysette’s face as she spoke.

“Alright.  The rules are going to be just the same as the duels back at the Academy.  No deliberate attempts at fatalities, no outside interference, the match will continue until either side is either incapacitated or yields.  We may each utilize any techniques at our disposal, with the exception for now that I will not use teleportation.”

Mirae raised their hand, but Lysette cut them off.

“Mirae,” Lysette said.  “I need you to promise me that, no matter what, you won’t pull any attacks against me.  In the fights to come, a single mistake will mean death, whether for you, for me, or for someone we care about.  We have to prepare for that eventuality— better to make the mistake of hesitating now, in training, than on the battlefield while we’re fighting foes that will take the slightest hint of weakness and use it to buy us tickets to the grave.”

“But what if I–”

“Love, remember.  The two of us are deities, and won’t be killed so easily.  This exercise is both to ensure that you can protect Rayleigh in the middle of combat, as well as for the two of you to work together to overcome a foe stronger than either one of you.”

“I’ll do my best.”

The three soon-to-be combatants brandished elemental weapons— the former two blades of ice, and the latter twin daggers of nearly invisible solidified air sharpened to a point.  Lysette took a defensive posture with her ice-forged greatsword held in front of her.  She closed her eyes and concentrated on her aurasight while preparing for the onslaught soon to come.

And it came quickly.  Rayleigh retracted their daggers and raised both index fingers toward Lysette, firing dozens of tiny air bullets toward her.  Mirae wasted no time either, slipping through the covering fire as they approached Lysette in a blur.  They raised their blade with a single upward thrust, and Lysette stepped back to dodge.

She was assailed from behind by the bullets from before, which had curved around just outside the maximum range of her aura.  Lysette smiled— Mirae had been sharing their intelligence surreptitiously even before the first clash.  And then she dodged.  Even with Mirae continuing to press their assault and her no longer having the ability to dissolve her body at will, Lysette still evaded, parried, and blocked each of the hundreds of attacks flying toward her each second from nearly every direction.

Lysette threw a seedling into the ground and, with a small mental impulse, germinated it and sent myriad thorny vines toward Rayleigh.  She expected Mirae to retreat and defend her human teammate, and was pleasantly surprised when they instead pressed their assault forward regardless.

Rayleigh formed a sphere of air into a series of whirling blades, grinding apart the vines as quickly as Lysette could guide them toward her.  Simultaneously, she and Mirae continued their dance of blades, each perfectly mirroring the other in strength and bladework alike.

The blades ricocheted off one another, sending shards of ice flying toward the onlookers, one only narrowly missing Lilia’s cheek as it shot off into the nearby foothills.  Lysette’s and Mirae’s eyes met for a brief moment.  But as the two lovers gritted and locked blades against one another, each trying to push the other back, Lysette suppressed her feelings and powered through, slamming Mirae to the ground.

Before they hit the snowy dirt, they sprouted their wings and retracted their blade, backflipping with a quick handstand before launching themself back toward Rayleigh.  The last of the vines from earlier were now completely shredded, and the three fighters stood once again in a neutral position.

“Well done, both of you,” Lysette said.  “I’d say that was a good warmup.”

“A warmup?” Lilia asked from the sidelines.  “That was just a warmup for you three?  I could barely keep up with your movements!”

“Yes,” Lysette said.  “And you are stronger than you know, Lilia.  I have no doubt that you wouldn’t have been able to keep up with us at all three months ago.”

“I–  I understand!”  Her look of awe turned cheerful as she processed Lysette’s words.

Lysette took the initiative in the second clash, summoning more sharp needles and thorns all around her before spraying a barrage of projectiles toward her opponents.  And then, mirroring Mirae’s tactic from earlier, Lysette charged the pair, this time coating her fists in icy gauntlets as she prepared for close-quarters combat.

Mirae retracted their ice blade and raised a wall of ice to shield the two from Lysette’s assault.  But Lysette only smirked as she scanned the ice wall for any signs of structural weaknesses.  Seeing a slightly thinner patch just below the center of the wall, Lysette readied her strength for a full-scale assault.  She launched an uppercut from a kneeling stance, cracking the ice wall as her spiked gauntlet tore into Mirae’s defense.

Rayleigh launched more air bullets toward Lysette as she readied her second punch.  But in the split second that Lysette hesitated to summon more plants to shield her, Mirae was able to reinforce their wall, blunting her assault.  Instead, Lysette made the decision to change course, suffering a superficial cut from an air bullet as she sprinted to the side and around Mirae’s wall toward Rayleigh.

She shifted her weapons from gauntlets back to a pair of short swords held in an inverted grip.  As Rayleigh raised her hands to try to counter, Lysette responded with a quick feint, then a sweeping kick which knocked her off-balance.  But Mirae intervened, launching a downward thrust that Lysette blocked with both her weapons, giving Rayleigh a moment to take to the air.

Lysette did the same, and Mirae followed the next instant.  Though Lysette tried to break away and resume her assault against Rayleigh, Mirae granted her no quarter.  They pressed Lysette at every opportunity, and Rayleigh was using the opportunity to generate a massive surge of aerial energy about her.

Lysette smiled.  “Ready, love, to take this fight up another level?”

“Of course.  I was wondering when we’d get serious.”

A bead of sweat glistened on Lysette’s forehead as she triggered her Rekindle.  More and more power surged into her muscles and wings as she propelled herself twice as quickly as before.  But Mirae did just the same, and the two remained in a dead-heat as they flew all around.

Shockwaves echoed through the air, and the two flew higher upward and toward the east to avoid inconveniencing the people of Ciricu.  Rayleigh followed behind at a much slower pace, still gathering energy as Lysette and Mirae engaged in ever-more-intense fighting.

The two demigods were both showing signs of fatigue after about a minute of fighting far beyond their bodies’ limits, but neither showed any signs of slowing down.  Mirae did shift to a defensive fighting style, moving closer toward Rayleigh as she continued to charge up for some attack or another.

Lysette decided to strike.  Using Mirae’s defensiveness to her advantage, she broke off and charged Rayleigh with reckless abandon before she could finish preparing the massive surge of power gathered in her hands.  Wind whipped at her face, a biting gale made even more cryonic by Rayleigh and Mirae’s combined efforts.  Still, the heat of Lysette’s Rekindle melted the frost forming on her skin as fast as the pair could generate it, and she powered through into the heart of the ice storm the two had generated.

Lysette retracted all of her ice-based techniques except for her wings, focusing all of her energy on repelling the boreal assault and pushing through the rapidly plummeting temperature.  Even under Rekindle, her muscles were barely able to generate enough heat to move, growing sluggish as her muscles started to disobey her mental commands.

“You should… give up… now!” Rayleigh said.  She panted and strained with each word, and Lysette saw a brief chance to steal a victory as she and Mirae struggled to maintain the intensity of their combination attack.  Lysette allowed herself to be pushed back, building her strength and building a mental connection to two large trees below to aid her final ascent.

“Give up?” Lysette smiled.  “The gods we stand against will never give up.  They will employ every dirty trick, exploit every weakness, both physical and mental.”  And overconfidence is one I’ve exploited many times before.

Lysette activated her linkage and sent tens of thousands of tiny pellets of bark toward the assailing pair.  The attacks did little to even blunt their assault, but as the gathered shards ricocheted off the barrier formed by Mirae and Rayleigh, they coalesced around Lysette.  And with a single mental command, they gathered around her, forming layers and even more layers of insulating armor for one final push.

“Don’t give in, Mirae!” Rayleigh shouted.  “We just need to hold her off for a bit longer!”

But Lysette, after shielding her entire body in five layers of woody armor, deactivated Rekindle and pushed through only with her normal— diminished, even— strength, choosing instead to outlast their efforts.  She could tell through her left eye that Rayleigh was on the cusp of giving out, and that Mirae’s stamina was not much better.

Still, Lysette knew she was prone to overconfidence as well, and she knew that Mirae knew her at least as well as she knew herself.  She thought through every trick she thought Mirae or Serrena would be likely to pull, and prepared as best as possible for each of them in kind.  Mirae wasn’t quite as strong as Lysette, so she didn’t suspect they were holding much in reserve. 

Rayleigh seemed to only barely clinging to consciousness from the strain of her bombardment, but she was Serrena’s disciple and Lysette wouldn’t dare count her out either.  The questions Lysette had to answer were: Who would break first?  Would it be real, or just a feint?  And if so, where to strike?

Everything hinged on the outcome of her choice.  And Lysette made her decision as the gales finally broke ever so slightly.  She charged forward into the tempestuous onslaught, and while the cold was affecting her less through her barky armor, the winds were even more difficult to navigate through.  Still she persisted toward Rayleigh, waiting for her to finally break her concentration, falter from the pain, something, anything.

And then it happened.  Lysette gritted her teeth and drew her sword, flying toward Rayleigh with every bit of strength she had left.  But when she finally came within five feet, she shifted course and plunged her blade right into Mirae’s shoulder just as her love did the same to her.  Both weapons dissolved as the two collapsed against one another, Mirae falling into Lysette’s arms as they both drifted toward the surface.

After a few minutes of regenerating through their respective injuries, the two looked at one another, smiled, and shared a quick peck on the lips.

“We were thinking for sure you’d go after Rayleigh,” Mirae said.  “We thought you’d feel too conflicted to go after me and instead decide to take out the weaker of us.  Then I’d strike you right as your attack connected.”

“That’s exactly why I did what I did.  You’d wait until Rayleigh was truly out of energy, knowing and sharing what intelligence you had on my left eye.  But just in case you were setting something up, I decided to feint toward Rayleigh and bait out your move, whatever it was.  I saw you flying toward me with my aura, but I didn’t have the time or speed to dodge without teleporting.  So I decided to go for a mutual strike and accept a draw.”

“Damn,” Rayleigh said, looking over both demigods.  “I didn’t really think you were as strong as Serrena claimed you were, after defeating your other body not that long ago.  But to fight like you did against Mirae for so long and still have that much strength left…  Are all gods as powerful as you three?”

“Definitely not,” Lysette said.  “We are, by the standards of the gods, impossibly weak.  By good fortune, we’ve not been snuffed out by other gods who’d seek our heads.  But I fear that will soon change.  Which is why we all need to make sure we’re focusing on our training and Cultivation as well as our duties to Domaria and the people of Ciricu.”

“That’s weak?” Amalia and Lilia asked in unison.

“I–  I’ve been a damned fool for so long,” Kiarra said.  “Thinking I was all that, when I only today got a glimpse of the true level of the world.”

Rayleigh shook her head and crossed her arms.  “Serrena would kill you if she heard you saying something like that.  Don’t waste your time and energy feeling sorry for yourself.  Use that pent up energy to push yourself that much harder going forward.  Alright?”

“Alright,” Kiarra said.

“Let’s all attend to our individual tasks for now,” Lysette said.  “Serrena and my other self will be back in a couple of hours, and I’d like all nine of us, as well as the leaders of Ciricu, to gather for a meeting tonight.  We’ve gained some new information about Cultivation, about the gods, and Aimarion as a whole that I think everyone needs to know.”

Chapter 216: https://www.patreon.com/posts/112940067

Table of Contents: https://www.patreon.com/posts/101896170

Chapter 218: https://www.patreon.com/posts/112940074