"Calm down Primogenitor," Pathfinder placed his hand on his ancestor's shoulder in an attempt to calm her down. Very few things could make the one, true ancestor of the Barbarians lose control.
Unfortunately, Ashera was one of those few things. In fact, the other ancestors knew that to mention the name Ashera in her presence was inviting her wrath. And no one wanted that – not even those who now shared a status almost equal to hers.
"Whew. Sorry about that." Primogenitor apologized with a bright smile on her face. It was almost as if her outburst from before was nothing but an illusion. But it wasn't. And Magma knew that all too well. His pale face and rapidly trembling frame from the residual aura of a powerful Phenom was proof of that.
"Calm yourself," Pathfinder furrowed his brows and placed his hand on Magma's shoulder. Immediately Magma felt a warm current flowing through his body and calming his rioting energy. Like a gentle flame it boiled the fear and anxiety from before into nothingness and restored Magma's calm.
"Thank you Da…Pathfinder" Magma almost referred to his father as he did a long time ago, before he became an Ancestor. The warmth he felt from his father's hand took his mind back to the times of peace and calm before his ascension. But he was quick to recover himself and correct his error. He couldn't call Pathfinder by any other title than his current one.
"I wouldn't do it again. You need to handle matters like these by yourself. That's the only way you can become a Phenom and live up to your potential." Pathfinder smiled warmly and said. His smile stunned Magma for a while. For it had been a very long time since he saw his father smile with actual emotion. Usually it was a shallow stretching of the lips that meant very little and contained almost nothing. It was merely symbolic. Not this time though.
"What do we do Primogenitor? Are you going to go after her?" Pathfinder turned to the Primogenitor and asked.
"Yes. Absolutely. Now that she has shown herself she shouldn't think of getting away. After all, we have a valid excuse this time." The Primogenitor smiled with excitement.
Pathfinder smiled bitterly seeing her behavior. Although he was the youngest of the Ancestors and the Primogenitor the oldest, when the two were together he was the more mature one. No one would ever see both of them walking along the road and think she was the older of the two. Her looks aside, her aura was extremely vibrant – not archaic like one would have thought – and her attitude was that of a brash teenager. And that was why most of the decisions were left to the 2nd Ancestor. Unfortunately, he wasn't around. But it wasn't like Pathfinder was just going to let her have her way.
"I don't think it is the right decision Primogenitor," Pathfinder naturally objected to her willful demands.
His words caused Magma to frown in worry. Pathfinder's daughter by blood was dead. Yet the man wasn't intent of bringing the murderer to heel. If this was what it meant to become a Phenom; if it took losing one's feeling and emotions to reach the peak, Magma felt that he was much better off not reaching it at all.
"Why not?" the Primogenitor folded her arms with a glaring look of disapproval on her face. She was obviously not happy with Pathfinder's objection.
"Because it is too risky," Pathfinder shook his head and said. He continued with his explanation seeing that she was silent.
"Since she has shown herself, that means that she is either prepared to deal with those that would come flocking her way, or she has backup. Even if she doesn't, she was strong enough to kill two Ancestors on her own thousands of years ago. She must have definitely grown stronger. It would be too risky for you to go. You are the absolute pillar of our race. Any of us can die, but not you."
The Primogenitor was powerful. There was no doubt about that. Amongst the Ancestors, only the 2nd could match her raw power. And even then, he could only hold her off for roughly thirty minutes. He would succumb to her strength after that amount of time elapsed.
But no matter how powerful she was, it was Ashera they were talking about here. Pathfinder wasn't alive when Ashera was carving out territories for the Elementals. However, the 2nd had told him a lot about this woman. Her power was at the very peak of this world, and the 2nd was not at all confident of taking her on.
"That woman…she is just as powerful as 1st"
That was what 2nd told him. And Pathfinder knew that it wasn't modesty that birthed such a compliment for a woman who was their enemy. 2nd was genuinely wary about the woman. And Pathfinder could sense a bit of relief in the 2nd Ancestor, Destiny's tone when he spoke of her disappearance and disinterest in the affairs of the last few thousands of years.
"I think that you worry too much," the Primogenitor shrugged and said.
"On the contrary 1st, I think that my worry is very much warranted," Pathfinder counted.
"If she is cursed like you say she is and that an effect of this curse is the power of infinite regeneration, how can you possibly kill her?" Pathfinder argued, and the Primogenitor furrowed her brows displeasingly.
Ashera and the Curse of the Tower of Hundred. It wasn't known to many, but all who knew of this character and the tower in which she resided were capable of changing the fate of this world with their actions.
It was said that Ashera was a young and willful Elemental once. She did as she pleased and thought nothing of her actions. Her pride was immense as she was a talent capable of instilling fear even in the powerful relics of the old generation. And her beauty was almost mythical. Everywhere she went, her beauty drew people to her. Sometimes it brought her good people, other times it brought her degenerates. It just so happened that one day it was a degenerate her beauty had pulled over.
The man was the son of a wealthy merchant and thought himself fit to possess the beauty before him. After all, if money couldn't have this gorgeous specimen before him, what could? It turned out that money was not enough. Ashera cared less for the man, and her pride as an Elemental saw her enter into a fit when she realised that the one making advances on her was a mere mortal – a human. She snapped his spine in half and frayed his nerves, leaving him alive – but only just. The man became an invalid who had to spend the rest of his life in bed, all because he approached a woman out of his league.
Ashera disregarded the incident. To her, it was another uneventful morning. But she was in for a surprise. The man she had thought of as mortal was indeed mortal. But he wasn't a mortal human. He was a mortal Ancient! The man was average, but his father was an Ancient Elder, and a powerful one at that. With his strength at the peak of the Pseudo Phenom Realm, few could match up to him. Hearing what happened to his son, he sought Ashera out, and they fought.
It was here that Ashera's legend truly began. With her strength only in the middle stages of the Pseudo Phenom Realm, she was able to push back the Elder after cutting off one of his arms! Through this fight she displayed her uncommon talent and superior battle senses that exceeded even that of Barbarians! The Elder could only helplessly flee back to the Ancients.
Years passed by after that incident. Those years quickly became decades, and those decades became centuries. Centuries turned into millennia and millennia into tens of millennia. Ashera became a Phenom and her legend grew. People knew her less as Ashera and more by her moniker – the Blood Witch. She cut down expert after expert, legend after legend. Yet none of her feats quite compared to her legend of killing the two brothers of the Barbarian Primogenitor. The two were powerful Phenoms who were alive long before Ashera, yet they fell to her blade! Not only that, she was able to escape as well. But her victory wasn't without cost. She was injured, and had to go into hiding for a while for she had felled an Ancient Ancestor as well in her escape. Hunted by the two races meant that she couldn't return to the Elementals for fear of implicating her race. But no hiding spot was permanent.
The one-armed Elder hadn't forgotten his blood debt. He had only buried it because he was weaker. But hearing that the powerful Ashera was injured, he knew that his time for vengeance had come. He was a master of the Mystic Arts and a very skilled seeker. So he gathered a team and went after Ashera, following the trails she had left behind. And he did find her. And they fought. But he underestimated the Blood Witch. For even injured, she was much more powerful than he could comprehend. But that was okay. He had come prepared. Feeling that this was the only chance he was ever going to get, he took out a relic of his family; a miniature tower that was said to contain the power to inflict curses.
Using the tower as a medium and giving his life as the price, he cursed Ashera. He cursed her with her worst fears.
"With my life as the price, I curse you. May you be inflicted with your greatest fear. And may you never die. You will live on and wish for death as the thing you fear the most consumes you."
The curse was a curse of infinite regeneration and her worst fear. To the one-armed Elder, someone like Ashera must fear losing her power the most. And that was what he expected to happen. But if he had lived long enough to see the effects of his curse, he would have been stricken with grief and wished he had been more specific with his words.
For Ashera's greatest fear wasn't losing her power. Her greatest fear was being fettered to one spot – unable to move as she wished. She feared losing her freedom the most. And that was what happened. The tower grew, and pulled her in. It kept her trapped and prevented her from being able to move as freely as she wished. And though she had found a way to navigate the boundaries of the curse over the years, she couldn't leave the tower for long. She was still trapped. And she had no way to break the curse.
"It is true that she has infinite regeneration."
The 1st sighed as she recalled the legend of Ashera's curse. She was experienced enough to know that everything was true. However, there was one thing that the one-armed Elder didn't account for. The Tower of the Hundred wasn't an ordinary curse medium, it was also a trial. As long as someone other than the cursed completed all the trials, they would be able to make a request. And that request could be the cancellation of a curse.