Clinging to life for a while longer, so as to serve death for just a few more minutes, for brainwashed soldiers who desired nothing more than to be granted the blessing and become the same as their masters, this certainly was a contradiction, yet, none of the invaders allowed themselves to go down easily, even when death was all but avoidable, their life force would contort and cavort to keep them alive, so that they could potentially get a chance at striking down an enemy.
Be it those who had come from beyond the realm, or those who had been born in the emerald cradle, both witnessed this fact firsthand, time and time again, a felled soldier in white would begin to tremble, going through a sudden mutation, something temporary, caused by a mix of condition, battle art and the divine body discovered within a frozen realm, for a limited amount of time, regardless of whether or not they were brought down again, those transformed soldiers would become no different than vile, corrupted monsters.
Abominations of flesh, bones breaking, extending to accommodate for their new, repugnant form, although it was easily handled by those exploring the steam, for their enemies rarely showed up in numbers, save for groups of bizarre beasts that lacked this mutating ability, for those that had laid siege upon the camps of the invaders, chaos had rapidly descended upon the field of battle.
The reigning chaos of merciless combat allowed for plenty of enemy soldiers to complete their transformation without interruption, causing the emerald folks to witness true horror as the change the fallen enemies went through were always unique, resulting in countless beings that should not exist launching themselves at them.
These abject beings of twisted flesh retained their minds, and the power they wielded was nothing to scoff at.
"Crush both their heads and hearts!" someone shouted.
"To the void with this! Let's wipe this entire place out, back off!" someone else responded, and suddenly, all emerald folks disappeared from the battlefield, some moving away too quickly for anyone to react, others simply vanishing out of thin air as emerald light shone down on them.
"Cover your eyes, the light is-" the invaders could suddenly no longer see their surroundings, not because darkness had fallen upon them, but because the light had become so bright that they could barely see their own arms, even when looking away from the source of the great shine, it was like light was flooded the entire area.
And the reason was more than obvious, the kind sun had not become any brighter, all was due to the titanic ball of light that had just appeared a few dozens of meters above their heads, they weren't being scorched or anything of the sort, but stranded in light, they could feel it coming closer.
And the closer it came, the more they realised that it wasn't just a sphere of emerald light, but that it was moving, appearing to be breathing like a living being, in fact, as it got closer, the deafening sound of a heartbeat struck them all down to the ground, balance lost as their eardrums were destroyed.
One invader raised his arms, staring directly at the falling sphere, his eyes melting in their sockets, but he knew that the agony permeating him was a defect of his condition as a living.
"G-Glory! This is our glory! My flesh shall be rent, and my blood evaporated! I will inherit the will of eternity! Ooh! Tear me from my living coil and make me one with the world's overlords! Glory!"
The living sphere of light collapsed upon the ground, engulfing the main camp of invaders in its entirety and beyond, one second, the realm seemed to be suffering a cataclysm, and the next, all was gone, the living brightness simply popped out of existence, leaving behind a land lush with bright blue vegetation, colourful trees, and even ponds.
The camp had simply vanished, the tents were gone, the equipment was nowhere to be seen, and the soldiers had disappeared, if not for the immense amounts of spirit life in the air, there would be no proof that there had ever even been a camp full of people and creatures before.
"We should have just done it from the start, I told you, it wouldn't even be draining at all if we all worked together, just a little bit of this, and a little bit of that and poof! All enemies annihilated and I am not even a little bit out of breath" Ioleznta said with both hands on her hips, her emerald cloak fluttering in the gentle wind.
"That may be true, but we needed to make sure we wouldn't be ambushed will creating it, and besides, I feel that it is not the wisest decision to show them that we can do this, there are other camps further away, they probably already relayed the decision" Zilania replied.
"No worries about this, they are already all under attack as well, we didn't bring anyone else, but it seems like the beasts decided to lend us a hand, it's… An absolute massacre, they aren't supposed to work together, but when they do, our glorious beasts are simply unstoppable, their elites look like children before them" Irlitimiz approached from the side with a wolfish smile, her ears twitched as she picked up on the distant sound of fighting, or rather, sound of slaughter.
"How are our friends doing over in the rocky region?" ask Liliazin.
"I can still hear their hearts beat like normal, they are all fine" replied Artazun, her voice sounding like a growl.
"But it seems like they are not finding anything, did the invaders hide the portal somewhere else?" wondered Artazim
"That seems unlikely, our gentle sun's light might not reach equally everywhere, but coupling our awareness of what the light touches, and our readings of the realms spirit life, there is nowhere but within the steam that they could have hidden, it is the only place that both prevents properly sensing through the light due the thick steam, and lacks in spirit life due to not housing much plants and beasts" the eldest Emerald Herald rubbed her chin in thoughts.
"Did they completely box themselves in?"
"How would they send out the newly arrived troops? And some of those soldiers are awfully large, one of them made a Polpitir look small in comparison, so they at least need a door to get out through"
"Well, what are we standing around here for? If we have nothing to do, might as well go and help them in searching-"
The heralds and priestesses all stopped and turned their heads toward the south.
"How did they manage that?"
"They dug, I suppose"
"I thought we had that option ruled out?"
"Their beasts never managed to dig far, but them? I don't recall that we caught them trying to do it…"
"Unbelievable,and I thought that the number of soldiers here was already obscene, but they have more in stock?"
"Do they grow their freaking soldiers on trees or something?"
"Let's hurry, there is a big, and I mean a very big one!"