"Get off me!"
My crescent blades sliced at Mara before she leaped away from me. It didn't do anything. Her head was indeed her only weakness after all.
I stood up and glared at her. Crimson scythes from my back disintegrated into thin air.
"Look here, I'm not your big sister or anything like that. You're probably five years older than me. So, sit tight and let me kill you!" I swung my blades at her. Multi-colored flames then poured forth but she vanished back into the ground.
"That Aegis is annoying!" I yelled.
Hatred trickled the trenches of my sanity. Before all that, I'd promised to protect the civilians and Enkhtuya itself. Their lives were something I wanted to save, but I failed.
"Curse you!" I clenched my fists.
With my bladed arms, I slashed at the ground beneath me. My flames exploded and the scorching ground melted even further. I concentrated the flames to burst at only at one point.
In just a few seconds, a crater of a few hundred meters was formed.
"Ava," called my Aegis.
I noticed that my flesh was disintegrating under the intense heat. My jacket slowly turned into dust, leaving me with only a brown shirt and my pair of black jeans.
I willed my flames to disappear, and Mara came into view. She was a dozen meters in front of me, her mouth gaped.
I glared at her. "It seems like I was right after all. There's a limit to how deep you can go underground. Your whole body can't handle the whole phasing effect if you were any five feet or so deeper than now."
Though, it was just a theory I came up with.
Considering that she seemed adamant to not phase her head, I thought about it. Perhaps she couldn't phase it unless she phased her whole body instead.
Mara looked at the burning flesh of her arms. She cast a sad look at me. "It hurts, Big Sister. Why do you do this? My Aegis can't be used for a while if I phased my whole body. Do you know that, Big Sis?"
'I was right after all,' I thought.
Phasing her entire body had a side effect. She didn't use it all the time because of it.
"Eh?" My head felt dizzy for some reason. "Is it time already? But I haven't--"
"Seems like your Mode took a bit more strain than it had previously. Perhaps your second Aegis is affecting it," said my Aegis.
"Urgh . . ." I pressed at my head with my right hand. "How much time do I have left?"
"Perhaps three to four more minutes. I'm afraid any more than that could be lethal this time around."
" . . . Is that so?"
I looked at Mara as she approached me. Her burning arms were regenerating, and so did a part of her face.
"My new flames stand a chance against her. I must get rid of her right now," I said.
My legs walked closer to her. Two dark blue scythes flung itself from my back and it passed through her body.
Mara gave me a confused look. "It will not work, Big Sis."
Then, my scythes halted in mid-air as its elongated hilts contracted. It flew back in my direction, but that time, my flames were gushing out from its pores.
Mara looked over her shoulder when my scythes cut her head off.
Her body stumbled before I sent my weapons at it, but it passed through as expected. The flames from my scythes soon engulfed the body.
"With this, her regeneration will be impeded to the point where she couldn't heal herself," I said to myself.
"A headless host, for an Aegis, is troublesome. It took more time to regenerate the head than the other body parts. Though, this is where your fire plays its part, Ava," said my Aegis.
"Precisely."
I was about to walk towards her when the ground shook. "What is it now?!"
A wave of peach crystals burst out from the spot where Mara's body was at. Immediately, it swallowed her, forcing itself back underground.
"Wait!" I looked at that flying Aegis User, but he wasn't paying attention to Mara. "That crystals must be from him . . . But how?"
"Ava, your body--" A static noise then replaced Aegis's.
It rang in my head for a few moments. My body swayed a bit and I fell to the ground, hitting the back of my head. " . . . Huh?"
I couldn't move my body. "It's . . . Too soon."
My Aegis weapons dissolved into thin air as I struggled to even lift a finger. I cast a glance at the others, and surely, they had stopped fighting.
The flying Aegis User was looking at the group with a sly grin.
Caesar looked at me. "Lady Ava!" He took a few steps when a peach spike sprouted out from the ground.
The blond man laughed. "No, not yet. I even wasted my energy to save Mara over there, so don't you go anywhere near Big Sis."
'What?' I thought.
Both him and Mara kept saying that I was their Big Sis, but that term was strange. They referred to me as someone they knew, though I didn't recall anything about those two.
Other than that, it seemed like the crystals that swallowed Mara was indeed his.
"If I may ask," Lily said. "What's your name? What are you, actually? I've never seen that type of Aegis before."
Odval coughed, and she cast a tortured look towards everyone at her side.
Somehow, an urge to save her welled up inside me.
"Ava," said Aegis in my head.
"You're back. Please, you must have some way to save Odval," I said.
Aegis was silent for a moment. "I have an idea. Though, it requires you to be near her at this current state of yours."
"Then . . ." I took a deep breath. "CAESAR!"
Everyone present there looked at me.
"TAKE ME TO ODVAL!"
Caesar seemed to understand what I was trying to say, and he sprinted in my direction.
The blond man up in the sky didn't seem to care about Caesar. He did stop him a while ago but somehow had lost interest in doing that again.
He looked at Lily with a smirk. "To answer your question, my name is Ivar . . . I'm a Pillar."
"Pillar?" said Lily.
Caesar then halted a foot from me and crouched. "Your eyes, Lady Ava. Your right is red, but your left is blue. Its--"
"Caesar! I don't have time for this. Take me to Odval now," I said.
He proceeded to carry me in his arms and went back to the group.
Ivar thrust his right hand into the air. "Remember this you weaklings. That Ivar shall triumph over ants like you! Now and forever!"
Lily gritted her teeth at what he said. She jumped with one leg and she was up in the air, intending to strike Ivar.
He sighed. "I'm starting with you I guess. A pink ant that doesn't know its place."
Lily thrust her left fist forward when she halted. "Eh?"
Ivar gestured with his right hand for Lily to come closer, and she floated towards him. She seemed to be unable to move somehow.
My heart thumped hard against my chest, knowing what would happen to her. "Lily!"
She didn't move, or perhaps she couldn't move at that time.
"Your entire body is made up of Aegis crystals, huh? Lucky you," said Ivar. "You should be honored to be the one I'm trying this on."
A golden tendril darted at him, but one of his wings blocked it.
Hope clicked his tongue from that.
"Now, let's see . . ." Ivar motioned with his right index finger in a circular motion.
"H-Huh?" Slowly, Lily's body twisted, as her waist cracked from it.
"Lily!" Caesar put me down near Odval and sent two javelins at Ivar. Hope had a few tendrils darted at him too.
However, Ivar's Aegis wings blocked it with ease.
"Aaargh!" Lily's crystallized body twisted 180 degrees before her torso cracked.
"No!" I cried.
"I'll send you back to them," said Ivar with a mocking smile.
CRACK!
Lily's crystallized body twisted at an impossible angle before she fell from the sky.