This Quest is Bullshit - Chapter 178

Chapter 178 - Into the Fire

Eve’s body, armor, and underclothes all disintegrated into a cloud of Mana the moment she came into contact with the firestorm. The blaze rushed to meet her. She fought to keep herself as tightly-packed as possible, struggling to reduce the surface area at which the flames could chew. Still it tore through her.

The pain was agonizing, but nothing Eve couldn’t handle. Like this, she had no flesh to rend, no nerve endings rage, no brain to process the electrical signals as the maelstrom of torment it was. There was only the sensation of malevolent hunger tearing off bits and pieces of her to feed its ravenous nature.

She pushed forward, her overcharged Mana pool steadily dropping as she floated towards the center of the blaze. Towards Wes.

An inkling of a plan scratched at the back of Eve’s consciousness, a faint idea lurking behind the agony that sought to obscure it. Maybe, just maybe, if Eve could get to Wes, could drain his Mana in the same way she’d drained the Man of the Mists, he could wrench back control.

Eve already knew it wouldn’t work. She’d have to be corporeal to drain him, which would only hasten her demise, and even without Mana the flames that already burned would continue, and Wes’s Gift of the Devouring Flame would draw more Mana from them. Still Eve pushed forth, determined to try.

With every second the flames ate away at her, ripping her Mana away by the thousands. Were it not for massive amount of fire resistance she’d gained when she’d reforged her body in dragonfire, she’d have already been dead.

Twice as she approached the eye of the firestorm did Eve try and recreate the technique she’d used against Carl’s flames. Twice she let the flames come, allowing it to burn away her Mana in exchange for a chance to exert her will upon it, capture its Mana for herself.

But this was no mere dragonfire.

Even after she brought the devouring flame’s Mana under her control, it raged on, burning hot and bright upon her Mana until she expelled it. There could be no holding such a thing.

Her Mana pool had fallen to half its overcharged capacity by the time Eve sensed Wes on the edge of her awareness. She reached out to him. Wes! Can you hear me?

Wes isn’t here right now.

Eve cursed, doubling down her effort to hasten through the blaze. She wanted nothing more than to Defy it then and there, but on cooldown the skill was useless to her. She could only hope against hope that draining Wes’s Mana would work. At the back of her mind, three reasons it wouldn’t popped up, but Eve refused to accept them. She could stop this.

She knew, as she finally reached him, that she’d have to materialize at least part of her body if she intended to use any abilities. She tried with just a hand upon his forehead, but the flames devoured it before it could fully form. The process cost her ten thousand Mana.

Eve needed more. She’d have to reassociate too much of her body for the devouring flame to destroy at once, flesh to burn, nerves to feel it and all.

She didn’t even pause to consider it.

She left her Ar-gold, armor, and underclothes as a cloud of Mana around her, knowing they’d do little good here. The rest of her materialized all at once, her hands cradling Wes’s cheeks.

Eve burned.

Her skin burned to ash and reformed with fresh Mana in a cycle of agony. Her lungs screamed in torment as she breathed in naught but fire. Her very soul wailed in protest as the flames pushed in.

But Eve didn’t relent.

She pushed her focus forward, towards Wes’s face within her hands, towards the inexplicable tear that dripped down her thumb.

Eve pulled.

The most obvious flaw in her plan reared its head immediately. Just as that she’d absorbed from the firestorm around her, the Mana she drained from Wes burned her from within. Even under her influence, a part of her Mana pool, its hunger never ceased. The more she pulled from Wes, the more she burned.

She could already feel herself losing this fight.

Eve’s mind raged against the dilemma before her. If she let this Mana into the environment or back into Wes, it would only fuel the firestorm. If she held onto it, it would burn through her instead. No matter what she did, the devouring flame would burn on.

But maybe she could give it something to burn.

Eve grit her teeth, her mind scrambling for an idea as it fought through the haze of agony. With Free Cast, she had more control over foreign elements of Mana than she’d ever had before. With Read the Threads, she could control exactly what her spell would and wouldn’t interact with.

Eve tried to swallow, but her parched throat returned only pain.

There was no telling what could happen. Her plan, if one could call it that, hinged upon three days’ understanding of how the threads worked what the devouring flame could do. For all she knew, she was about to set her very soul ablaze.

But as Eve stood there, the world around her and her body itself burning from within and from without, she didn’t care. She had to try.

Once more she reached out to Wes, pulling strands of fiery torment from him and into herself. She let it burn, pulling more and more from the wellspring for inferno before her. She needed to make sure she’d have enough.

Her Mana plummeted as the fires fed.

Eve steeled her soul and kept pulling.

The last of her overcharge ran out, and Eve’s own personal Mana began to go up in smoke. Still she pulled. The dragon scale Mana lines along her body ran red with fire, glowing channels of molten magic that seared the flesh around them. Still she pulled.

She waited until her pool hit half capacity before she released her hold on Wes and turned her focus inward. She watched with her mind’s eye as his Mana ate away at her, burning the fuel she’d so willing given it. No more.

It was less of a spell and more of a crude instruction, a single thread binding all the devouring flame Mana together, and another pointing it in the right direction. Eve attached it directly to another concept within her mind’s eye.

A timer, ticking down from twenty nine hours and fourteen minutes.

The flames devoured it as readily as they did anything else, sinking their teeth into it and burning it away until no more remained of those hours than a black char mark where they’d once been. Eve extended her mind to Wes’s. I’m gonna fix this.

The devouring flame took the bate. You shall burn.

No.

The firestorm around her seemed to quake as she Defied it, pulling away especially from Eve as she held fast before it.

The inferno returned with a vengeance, tearing her flesh and Mana away in chunks, but Eve was just getting started. Even after reusing the Unique ability, no new cooldown appeared. There was only the black mark she’d burned upon her soul.

This world is mine.

No.

I am inevitable.

No.

All shall burn.

No.

Again and again and again she Defied it, beating back its every advance with the unmatchable force of her indomitable will. It fought back with a fury, flames flaring bright and hot around her, but try as it might, it could not break Eve’s spirit. It couldn’t quash her defiance.

She couldn’t see it from her vantage at its center, but the firestorm around her shrunk with every defiance, with every refusal to allow the world to be this cruel. Eve stood at the gates between realms, the only warden between life and the embodiment of destruction and hunger. She let it wash against her in waves, faced its rage and its torment, felt the unimaginable might of a being outside of reality bearing down upon her, and whispered soft defiance.

No.

Its claims grew weaker, smaller, and more focused as its grasp on Eve’s world grew more and more tenuous. Still she Defied it.

My way is paved.

No.

This realm is open to me.

No.

He is mine.

No.

I control him.

No.

The flames shall feed.

No.

Eve’s Mana dwindled. Her consciousness faded as her defiance took its toll. She held on as long as she could, unwilling to let the darkness take her until she knew her foe had been beaten.

The last things she remembered before she collapsed to blackened ground, were the cool breeze on her neck, and the pink light of sunset coloring the sky.

——

Eve awoke lying naked in the ruins of Ponsted, the glow of sunrise piercing her eyelids. She jerked upright, waving her notifications away to clear her vision for the one thing she cared about.

Wes lay to her left, his chest gently rising and falling in peaceful slumber.

He was okay.

A million questions remained to be answered, but the one above them all, the only one that really, truly mattered, sang as a song through Eve’s mind.

Wes was okay.

Eve paused to materialize her underclothes and armor onto her body and pull her pack and other items from storage before pushing herself to her feet and taking in her surroundings. Ponsted stood a village of ash.

A number of villagers milled about the wreckage, doubtless searching for any trace of their valuables that might’ve survived. They’d given the two sleeping adventurers a wide berth, too frightened to dare disturbing them after all they’d seen. Eve could understand that.

Other than the bare frames of a few ravaged buildings, nothing in Ponsted had survived the firestorm. Nothing other than the people Wes had evacuated. At least, that’s what Eve thought at first. That’s what she’d expected, after all. The devouring flame burned indiscriminately.

It was that reasoning that so blindsided Eve when she turned around to find a single structure still standing. Its walls were charred, its sign illegible, the two steps up to its front door reduced to ash, but it stood, tall and steadfast as if in open defiance of the flame’s destruction.

The building hit Eve like a slap in the face. “Huh,” she said, slowly, almost nervously making her way towards it.

The structure was familiar and unfamiliar at once. Its construction sparked no memory in Eve’s mind, but something about its location tugged at the edges of her consciousness. It wasn’t until she stood right before it that she remembered.

This building stood not because of some whim of fate or mercy in the devouring flame, but because two years before, just as a pair of fledgling adventurers made their way to town, it had abruptly caught fire in a baking accident and burnt to a crisp. Its owner had spared no expense in its rebuilding, including every safeguard against immolation he could get his hands on. His bakery had burned down once, and he wouldn’t let it burn down again.

Eve stepped inside.

The villagers who’d gathered in the only structure still standing parted as Eve appeared, nervously stepping aside to allow her clear passage up to the counter. The man behind it stared up at her frightfully. Eve stared back.

Numb, as if in a trance of trepidation and impossibility, Eve reached into her pocket and placed two copper pieces on the counter. They were rusted, singed, pocked with acid and coated in a layer of grime so thick it defied understanding. She slid them across the counter.

Eve stood there for a moment, mind in shock more than anything else, as she watched the baker’s gaze flick down to the two coins and back up to her. The words came all at once, words she’d said a hundred times over her life, and no doubt would say a hundred times again, and yet then, in that moment, they carried as much weight as any words ever spoken.

“One loaf of bread, please.”