"AHH!" Eliana screamed, shooting daggers at the foes over her head. Eyes bloody-red, she pulled her hood backward, only to send it forward, in order to strike the dark creatures.
Eagles at the front flew upward, then dive all at once from the sky at a blurring speed. They radically availed themselves of their combat prowess.
While Eliana's hood swang forward, three or four eagles at the back came nearer to her giant body, and tried to dig their talons into her flesh.
A bit antagonized, she filled her cloaca with an enormous intake of air then released it back into a giant fart similar to a small cyclone that shoved the eagles away from her back.
She fumed visibly yet physical anguish halved her predator's agility. The pain she was subjected to experience was akin to the feeling of scalding hot metal balls forcefully being dragged up and down inside her veins. It felt, as though they would be torn at any time.
To top it off, heat boiling inside Eliana's skull began melting each and every fold and crease from the large pinkish-gray pile of brain. Sweat dribbled down her back, as she kept harping inside, 'It's in your brain, Eliana! Tear this physiological bubble of illusions! It's not real!'
As though, the eagles could see through Eliana's mind, they plowed away in flapping their wings pouring their hearts in the task. Soon, the forest was bursting at the seams with noises.
For Eliana, the process didn't feel any different from the point when waves would ebb away from the shore slowly, then suddenly a gigantic wave would rise from the depth of ocean, and it would border on the coastline, baring its famished horizontal tunnel, before rolling over the beach and engulfing everything in it.
Eliana's eyes rolled upward, her breath wheezed in and out of the flared nostrils, and her pulse accelerated; once again she was swept under the dominance of flapping.
Just then, two guileful eagles grasped holds of four spots on her belly wielding their long, sharp talons.
A hiss of acute pain flew past Eliana's mouth, as more than a dozen talons sank into her belly. Blood was oozing out of the wounds, whilst the large, curved beaks started biting on her.
Apparently, her belly wasn't hard to penetrate into, because the hard scales only ran at the length of her back.
Eliana slapped one of them away with her tail. As for another, she snaked her tail through the arch between its legs and beak that latched onto her flesh, then separated the eagle from herself with a suppressed gasp of pain.
Four talons on each foot tore the pieces of flesh they grasped, while the beak came out with a tiny piece as well, unleashing acute pains on her.
Agonized with pain, the rims of Eliana's eyes turned red, as if she just painted it that way. She suffered, yet she fought, coiling her tail around the perpetrator and constricted it until she heard all the bones of its body crack.
The eagle's hostility increased by tenfold, when another lifeless body fell on the ground.
Ensuing, another three threw themselves at Eliana, while others soldiered on with their flapping, as the action itself was their talisman against the snakes.
At that moment, something emerged from the space between Eliana's eyebrows—very tiny at the first sight—then it soldiered on with spinning speedily until it evolved into a palm size sparkling gemstone.
It went over Eliana's head. The glaring light spilling from it instantaneously blinded the eagles and hurled them out of, at least, fifty meters radius.
"Eunias! Why in God's name did you come out?" Eliana yelled, slightly throwing back her head and staring at her henchman. Warm rays showering on her, rinsed off all the mental struggles she had been undergoing.
Since half of her energy was freed from dealing with the physiological trauma, she went back to be vigilant. Her eyes squinted, counting her enemies, making sure none had escaped yet.
Eagles, in their human form, shielded their eyes with their forearms. Eunias's holy rays burned their eyes, just the way acid would to skin.
"You shouldn't have revealed yourself! Get inside!" Eliana rebuked, and a pained hiss tore out of her throat immediately when the raw flesh on the belly had been accidentally stretched due to yelling.
"Then should I watch you die?" The loud baritone boomed through the mind link, it was thickened from swallowing a good amount of anger. "Damn! Treat your wound first! The magic you inherited runs in your blood! Losing blood is equivalent to mana spewing out from your inside! Tend to your injury quickly! You have to get my brothers to reconcile with me, remember?"
"That's the impending necessity, Eunias." A subtle sigh, containing helplessness, flew past Eliana's lips. "Exclusively for this reason, we have to conceal our identity. We are yet to lay the groundwork for their extermination."
A haughty snort buzzed briefly, followed by a little reproof that reverberated like it was spoken from a huge empty room with no windows or door; "You are the only warrior against four nations! Hence, gird up your loins quickly. It will be utter shame after all the hopes you have been pushing inside your family and people, if you are to die right here, instead of in the real battlefield!"
Eliana showed no sign of bitter aftertaste from Eunias's acrimonious remarks that at some point used to assault her pride.
It could be because now her pride was threaded with pain, the one she shared only with him. They both unwittingly betrayed and lost their dear ones at the same time.
Nevertheless, Eunias could be said to be in a better position than hers; at least, he had her to feed the harsh doses of blame, but she...none but herself.
"In this body, it's my first time experiencing eagles' flapping: they were almost thirty at that too. I'm going to block my sense of hearing."
"Temporarily sealing your hearing in normal circumstances is one thing, but doing so for dealing with eagles is another. You know you will be defying the rules heaven laid, right?"
Eunias's nagging voice laced with concern took a tiny break that lasted a second, awaiting Eliana's response, then impatience jerked him. Clearly, he couldn't spoil her with more time!
"To pay off the consequence, your mana will spring out from every pores of your body, the way water spurt out from a broken nozzle!"
"Whatever remains will be more than enough of the required energy to deal with some first stage magic shards holders."
Eliana drew a big healing rune that covered all her injuries on the belly, then had the holy symbol surrounded by seventeen letters from the runic alphabet inside a circle. She drew a few more horizontal lines with branches jutting out vertically, before placing her palm over it and running her mana in the veins of rune.
Blue transparent runes soon heated up to become purple; a gush of warmth surged forth from the rune, it stirred in the deep laceration. Divine healing power, invoked by her, sterilized and filled the gaping tears with new flesh expeditiously.
"Now, this should wipe your worries, get inside."