Eternity Ends (2/2)

Several more minutes pass by, and she finally feels her husband's body go back to a reasonable temperature. Then, he relaxes his grip on her and unfurls his wings.

The second his wings curl away, huge wafts of black, sulfuric smoke assaults the Queen's face, and her eyes and nose start stinging painfully. Dakka starts flapping his wings to beat away the smoke.

Once the blackness is finally clear, the Queen opens her eyes, and she gapes in shock.

'Where did the Threshold go? Where'd the ground go? Why did the entire earth turn black again?'

Judging by the sulvuric smoke rising into the air, the explosion had boiled the entire surface into lava. However, the lava had cooled and hardened again when Dakka was sucking all of the heat away.

'When did Haalfrin get so powerful?' she can't help but wonder fearfully.

She then looks up at her husband's face, and she sees that his skin is so badly charred that she can see bone in several places. "AH! We have to get you…" She doesn't get to finish talking before she feels herself go short on breath.

"Sorry… about that…," Dakka apologizes. "I'm… telling the air elementals… to fix the air… for you… The… elementals were hurt… pretty badly by the explosion…, so the air isn't…"

"Quit talking already!" the Queen slaps him upside the head. "Just get down and start looking after yourself! I can't have you dying right now!"

"Isn't… this your chance?" he asks with a wry, toothy smile. "I'm weak enough… for you to kill me easily… for now."

The Queen seriously contemplates killing him… but in the end, she decides against it. For some reason, she just wouldn't feel at ease if this dragon wasn't beside her.

Seeing the look on her face, Dakka chuckles happily, "I'm… glad… you made your choice… to stay with me…"

The Queen scowls, "Hmph! I hadn't tried rebelling against you all this time, and according to you, I've only just now 'made my choice'?"

"Choices… can't exist… without power." He hugs her tighter. "You… didn't have… a choice… to be with me… until you had the… power to leave."

"Stop talking already," the Queen mutters as she looks at the ground below her. "Just lower us down. I think it's cool enough to stand on."

And so, Dakka lowers himself down through the air. Then, two sets of feet softly land on the rock below – one set being large and scaley, while the other being pale and delicate.

The Queen then carefully lowers the heavy dragon to the ground, and she takes off her outer rope, spreads it out across the ground, then lifts her husband onto it. She'd like Dakka's most wounded areas to at least not rest on the rocky, dirty ground where it might get infected.

While she starts trying her best to practice that healing magic she's never gotten to use before, Dakka passes out completely.

Looking at Dakka, she knows very well that she can't depend on him. 'I'll have to do this all myself, then. I know very well that Haalfrin or his demons might show up any second now. I have to be prepared.'

So, she holds one hand out, and she starts recreating her Ant army once again, and she has them spread out across the land. Then, she has them bury themselves in random spots in the earth. She DOES need extra vessels to revive into, after all.

No sooner does her Ants start burying themselves does she feel a powerful presence descend upon her. She looks up and sees Haalfrin's lone form coming closer. "You…"

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Without hesitation, Haalfrin draws his necro crystal sword and charges at her. Before he can get too close, the Queen holds up her hand and says, "Stop for a moment."

Surprisingly, the human digs his heels into the charred ground, and he listens.

The Queen slowly steps away from her husband, and she says, "I'll fight you… just promise that you won't try attacking him while he's weak. He IS your friend, right?"

Haalfrin lowers himself a little to the ground, and he snorts, "Oh? Showing concern for your husband finally? Are you wanting to earn my sympathy and have me be merciful?" He then frowns, and his gaze softens. "You have my word, though."

While Haalfrin was talking, the Queen had time to think, 'Good! Since I don't have to worry about Dakka being caught up in the fighting, then I'll just do what I've always done – let the human and his demons kill me a couple of times. He'll waste his strength on pointless attacks, then I'll slowly pick him apart while he's at his weakest."

So, she looked at Haalfrin with complete derision as he closes in on her with one hand glowing an eerie orange.

For the next few moments, the Queen focuses only on dodging, since she'll surely make Haalfrin run out of mana before her.

Of course, playing only defensive, the Queen is sure to mess up at some point. Even as the black sword stabs her gut, she can't bring herself to care. 'I'll just revive in one of my children's bodies any moment now.'

And so, without resisting, the Queen just stands as Haalfrin lays his hand on her grinning face… And that's when the pain started.

All at once, she feels herself drowning in a horrible feeling. It's a feeling far worse than having your bones scraped by needles; it's worse than being boiled alive.

In complete and incomprehensible agony, the Queen is like a deflating bag of air, except her soul is the bag, and the air is her mana.

Yes, to the Queen's horror, she feels all of the mana in her soul being forcibly yanked out. This process is exponentially more painful because of how much mana she has.

So much mana comes out at once, in fact, that she's quickly encased in hard, glowing, white crystal that gleams a rainbow color – true Mana Stones.

There, the Queen is frozen in a stepping-back posture, and Haalfrin's hand is stuck to her face.

The escaping mana crystal is only thick enough to cover the Queen's skin an inch thick, so most of Haalfrin's body is left to freely continue pulling her mana out.

Once the mana is out in the air, Haalfrin's Advanced Fel Name starts turning it all into Death Aura. The cloud of Aura becomes so thick that droplets of necro water start forming and raining on the ground before the water is pulled towards Haalfrin and sucked into his skin.

After several long, agonizing minutes, the Queen sees, before her very eyes, that the mana crystal encasing her is melting from around her face. This is happening because the rate at which Haalfrin's Fel Name can transform the mana is catching up to the rate at which he can pull mana out of her soul.

With her face free now, she looks around at the columns of mana rapidly dissolving into thick black mist… which quickly condenses into black rain which formed large puddles of black goo on the ground. All the Black liquid seeped towards Haalfrin and sinks into his skin rapidly – disappearing forever.

Except… the pain isn't over.

More and more mana is pulled out of her… and the Queen screams in fear.

Out of desperation, the Queen uses some of her quickly depleting mana to erect a barrier around herself… except the mana in her barrier is directly transformed into that disgusting black rain the second she materializes it.

She tries sending a beam of energy at him, but his black arms immediately change shape as Haalfrin manipulated the pure Death Aura they were made of. The solid Death in his limbs rapidly engulfs the Queen and absorbs her attack. The mana from her attack even gets turned into more Death Aura – feeding her attacker more.

The Queen grows more desperate, and she tries everything she can to kill herself and get out of his literal death grip… but Haalfrin had completely pinned her down to the ground with his black tendrils of Death Aura that were reaching directly out of his body, like countless limbs that perfectly obeyed his will.

Feeling the icky sensation of the Aura on her skin, she begins to feel that death is truly upon her…

Tears streak out of her eyes as she cries in agony, "Dakka! Save me! Dakkaaaaa!"

Her cries go quieter and quieter until there's nothing left to take from her.

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Haalfrin finally releases his hand from the Queen's face and stands up. Looking down, he sees that the Queen is barely clinging to consciousness, and she appears to be bone thin and tired looking.

In fact, the Queen is far too weak to even move her head, so her face just flops to the side and gazes towards the grey, gloomy horizon.

Haalfrin's boot slams on the ground right in front of her face – blocking her view.

The Queen weakly turns her eyes to look at him with tears on her cheeks. "P-please don't!"

She hears Haalfrin unsheathe his dagger and put away his necro-crystal sword, and she hears his soft voice say, "The steel blade is more humane – it hurts less. I'll make this quick."

The Queen, fully comprehending what is happening right now, starts screaming in agony, regret, and loss, "No NO! I'm sorry I-"

Before she can say anything else, the dagger comes down like a hammer and hits the left side of her chest, where her heart should be.

The Queen coughs out blood from her lung being pierced. Then, once Haalfrin steps away from her, she looks back towards the horizon again with longing in her eyes.

"You're still alive?" comes Haalfrin's surprised question. "I could've sworn I hit you in the heart."

What neither of them know is that the Queen's heart is actually on the right side of her body – not the left. It's a rare genetic condition where the symmetry of your body is completely flipped.

One could say that the Queen's strong Yiir / luck is trying desperately to keep her alive – even for just a few moments longer.

Either way, the Queen is bleeding out, and she has no mana left to heal herself with. She knows grimly that she doesn't have long to live.

Haalfrin is about to finish her off when she grabs the edge of his boot; her grip is surprisingly firm for a person about to die.

She looks up at him and growls, "I… hate… you…"

"I know."

Fina's gaze then softens, as if she doesn't even have the energy to be angry with him anymore. "Is.. there… a sun… in the Death Realm?"

"There is."

"Is it bright… and yellow? Is… it warm…?"

"It is."

Hearing this, the Queen's firm grip on his boot loosens, and her hand falls limp to the ground. Her breathing stills and her eyes glaze over.