The incoming meteor would take about a minute to finish descending. That was one of the weaknesses of this spell. However, the devastation would be immense. I could avoid the attack myself, but I’d need to choose who to protect. I could protect the village or the people in the palace. The other would almost certainly be destroyed by falling rock.
“I… will never be your slave. I will never be anyone’s slave again.” Astria declared, summoning up the last of her strength to force herself to her feet, stumbling slightly.
I lowered my head. “Did you… really hate being Deek’s slave so much?”
“Hate… Deek?” She laughed bitterly. “I loved him. I loved him so much.”
“Then, why?” I demanded.
“This is all I can do… to honor his memory, to protect his legacy.” She responded helplessly. “Even if you stopped me, Elaya took over the city. You’ll never defeat her. She rerouted all of the mana from the fairy spring into building her grand dungeon. She was corrupting it, the entire thing. I could only reroute a piece of it, to keep infusing it with mana, to keep it from becoming a dark miasma fountain. I need more energy, more fairies, more mana… or she’ll win and Chalm will fall into darkness forever.”
“You’re protecting Chalm?”
“It doesn’t matter anymore. If you’ve come, then others will as well. I cannot protect the existence of the mana anymore. The west will fall into shadow. My only wish is that Elaya’s darkness one day washes across your cursed Ost Republic, and you face the same darkness that you plunged all of us into when you took him from us.”
“I’m sorry, Celeste… I couldn’t keep you safe down there any longer. You will have to fend for yourself.”
“Celeste? She’s in the mana spring! That’s why you’re sucking out the mana. Celeste is sucking it up for her next evolution, and since Elaya’s redirecting the mana and started turning it into miasma, you were afraid she wouldn’t have enough miasma to transform, or worse, that the miasma contaminated her form, and she ended up a dark fairy like you!”
“Heh… you’re truly too smart for your own good. That’s why I know you’re capable of surviving this meteor strike too. So, I have been given no choice. My love, I will only ever be your slave, no one others. Know that in the end, I did everything for you.”
“Astria, enough of this. I’m De-”
“No!” I leaped forward as I felt a surge of energy erupting in her.
She wasn’t just going to bring down a meteor strike to level the place. She was going to destroy herself too, using self-destruct to distract me so I couldn’t get away or protect the mana fountain. Her actions had been ruthless, but not something that angered me anymore. How had things come to this? As I ran to her, I realized I had no hope of reaching her before she self-destructed. I could only watch, seemingly in slow motion, as her body tore itself and exploded. The backlash to me would also be substantial and followed by a meteor strike, I wasn’t certain I could survive, but that wasn’t even running through my mind at that moment.
As her body began to be torn apart, the mana spring erupted in a blinding white light. It exploded out, covering the entire area, us included. At that moment, I heard a voice gently whisper across the land like the wind.
“Mother can be so foolish sometimes.”
The entire world turned white.