Chapter 1245: The Lucky Ones

The cavern was filled with Elven light.

Gold intertwined with green and moonlight flickered weakly within the Moon Elf, while silver flowers opened one after another in the other’s Life Root too. The Origin Elf stood immobilized a short distance away as her companions gave away the lives Phei had arrived too late to preserve.

He could have stopped them.

That was the ugly truth.

In his current state, Phei could have immobilized both males as easily as he restrained the women. He could have refused the sacrifice, dragged all five away and searched for another solution.

Or so the Origin Elf thought even though she knew such a thing didnt exist here on earth.

Although he possessed monstrous healing, life force stolen from World Transcendents and power vast enough to make the prison chains snap beneath a glance but none of it could invent a Life Root from nothing.

For all the power flowing through him, there were still wounds that had already crossed beyond healing.

After a while, it finally came an ended and the Moon Elf collapsed first, though life now burned far stronger inside him than it had moments ago... the Flower Elf followed, the flowers throughout her hair blooming fully as her Life Root began drawing upon the renewed foundation within her.

Phei released the three from their restraints.

The Origin Elf rushed forward; the High Elf and Forest Elf had fallen to their knees.

Their breathing had become faint.

Very faint.

Phei went to the Origin Elf first.

She saw his hand approaching and recoiled from it, disgust flashed through her grief.

Phei understood.

He had restrained her while someone she cared for sacrificed his life for her and had prevented her from stopping it. Perhaps she would hate him for a while.

Fine.

He placed his hand against her anyway and Healing Touch entered her restored Life Root.

This time the change was immediate and rich vitality spread outward from her core and flooded through her exhausted body, restoring meridians, nourishing her starved flesh and awakening her essence that had spent years being squeezed toward extinction. Color returned beneath her pale skin, her woodland-blue eyes brightened and something ancient stirred within her with enough purity that even Phei felt the difference.

He moved to the Moon Elf next, then the Flower Elf.

Both responded; the three surviving Elves were healing but behind him, two others were dying.

Phei turned.

The High Elf had collapsed beside the Forest Elf.

He walked toward them and lowered himself between both males.

Life was leaving them quickly now.

Phei had witnessed the most gripping deaths of his life and he had caused several only minutes ago.

World Transcendents had died beneath his hands without earning more than a passing thought.

This felt different.

There had only been one other times Phei remembered looking at someone he desperately wanted to live while knowing that nothing in his hands could change what came next.

A burning car, his mother’s snapped neck, his father’s voice telling him to go away and Melissa dragging a seven-year-old boy away while he fought her because he did not understand why the strongest person in his world was being left behind.

The memory came and went.

Phei’s face revealed none of it.

The three women watched him kneel beside the dying males.

Perhaps they had expected indifference from the terrifying being who had consumed seven souls without hesitation, restrained them against their will and treated World Transcendent power as though it were barely worth noticing.

They were wrong.

He cared; he simply did not know what to do with that care.

Phei released the seals over the women’s mouths.

The Origin Elf immediately dropped beside the High Elf.

The Flower Elf fell beside the Forest Elf, tears spilling freely now, while the Moon Elf knelt between them with both hands pressed against her lips.

Phei looked at the High Elf.

Then at the Forest Elf.

{What are their names?}

The Flower Elf answered first, barely managing the words through her crying.

The Moon Elf whispered the second.

Phei repeated both names once.

Quietly.

Committing them to memory.

Then he gave a small nod.

{Mmm.} It sounded almost careless.

The Origin Elf looked up at him sharply.

Phei snapped his fingers and both bodies disappeared.

For several stunned breaths, nobody spoke.

Then the Origin Elf surged to her feet: "What did you just do?"

Phei had already turned away.

She stared at his back, grief igniting into anger so quickly that the restored life inside her almost seemed to burn: "You..."

He looked over one shoulder, something about his expression stopped her for the smallest moment.

Phei sighed then snapped his fingers again.

The cavern vanished.

The Origin Elf’s unfinished curse died upon her lips when warm light suddenly replaced the underground darkness.

She stumbled as the soft carpet met her bare feet.

The Moon Elf appeared beside her, followed by the Flower Elf, and all three froze when they realized they had been transported into an enormous luxurious space unlike anything they expected after centuries of imprisonment. High ceilings disappeared beneath warm illumination, broad couches and tables occupied one side of the chamber, while distant doors opened toward rooms large enough to belong inside a royal residence.

More importantly, there were no chains.

The darkness surrounding them had retreated completely here.

The Flower Elf gasped when her silver blossoms opened wider, responding greedily to the freedom of having nothing suppressing her Life Root.

Three figures were already inside.

The female Demon looked toward them first.... beside her, the Seraphine and the Dragonkin who rose from where he had been sitting, surprise passing across his face when he recognized the three Elves: "You too?"

The Moon Elf stared at him.

The Dragonkin’s eyes moved over their restored bodies and settled upon the complete absence of chains. "You were saved too?"

The Flower Elf nodded.

Her eyes immediately filled again, she explained: the prison, the stranger appearing, the seven guards dying, their chains breaking.

Their Life Roots.

The two sacrifices.

By the time she finished, the female Demon and Dragonkin were staring at the three Elves with expressions difficult to read.

Then the female Demon released a breath: "Lucky."

The Origin Elf’s woodland-blue eyes sharpened... for the first time since arriving, anger overtook grief: "Lucky?"

The female Demon blinked.

The Origin Elf stepped toward her. "We just lost two of our own, and you call us lucky?"

The Dragonkin grimaced.

The Seraphine raised both hands. "You didn’t meet the wrathful Void so I understand you thinking you had choice and he owed you salvation... it’s stupid but I wont blame you."

The Origin Elf stopped.

Something in the Demon’s expression took the heat from the next words before she could speak them. The woman who had survived countless years of chains looked genuinely disturbed.

"We have seen terrible things," the female Demon continued, quieter now, her face tightened. "Nothing has frightened me like that."

The Dragonkin sat down again with a heavy exhale. "She isn’t talking about the young man who rescued you."

The three Elves looked toward him.

The Dragonkin paused.

Then corrected himself. "Actually... I don’t know if that’s true."

The Origin Elf’s eyes narrowed.

The female Demon sat slowly beside him.

And between them, they began explaining what had happened in Anarctica and souls disappearing so completely that those left behind could only feel the empty places where companions had existed moments earlier.

The Origin Elf slowly lowered herself into one of the nearby seats, the Moon Elf had gone silent while the Flower Elf touched the living silver flower Phei had restored in her hair.

All three remembered the young man standing inside the prison.

His impossible life.

His endless power.

The Void seething within him.

The Origin Elf remembered him kneeling before her and kissing the back of her chained hand: {Such an honor to meet Your Ladyship, Origin Elf.}

She remembered hating him when he restrained her, the disgust when he forced Healing Touch into her restored Life Root, the High Elf smiling because Phei had agreed to do what their leader never would have allowed.

The female Demon watched understanding slowly enter the three Elves’ faces, "You were found by him after the anger was over," she said.

The Dragonkin gave a humorless laugh. "Believe me. That makes you lucky."

The Origin Elf looked down at her hands.

Whole hands; her unchained hands, her Life Root burned warmly inside her again filled to the bream with life, the Flower Elf beside her was alive and the Moon Elf.

Two others were not.

Gratitude and grief sat together inside her until she could no longer tell which one hurt more.

The Origin Elf had nothing to say.