Chapter 4412: Primordial Dread (Part 2)

The Maiden experienced the desperation and hunger that had led Ahote and her tribemates to feed on the corpses of their kin to survive the seemingly never-ending winter as if it were her own.

She relived all those memories at the same time, and not as Baba Yaga, the powerful white core she was now.

When the visions Zero stirred from Baba Yaga’s primordial fear of cold and fueled by her worst experiences assaulted her psyche, she was back to being a young Odi woman.

A young Odi woman with considerable magical talent, but with a weak dormant mana core who had no idea how to survive in the wilds. Now Baba Yaga was strong enough to light a fire that could melt a mountain, but there was no mana to keep her warm in her nightmares.

The Zero runes with which the Lodestar filled her thoughts spoke of all the terrible things that had happened to her and those that might happen to her were she to lose control over the Cursed Element of water.

Baba Yaga gulped hard, using sheer will to fight back those images, reminding herself of who she was and with whom she was.

’I’m not that person anymore, and part of these memories belong to Ahote, not me.’ She thought. ’The cold can still kill me, but only if I allow it to. I am Baba Yaga, the Mother of all Undead, and I’m in the mage tower of my dear friends, Ripha and Epphy.

’Even if I mess up, they will save me. I know that they can and they will!’ She used those words as a mantra to conquer her fears and add one more Zero rune at a time.

The nightmares from her past would then become even more vivid, arousing details that Baba Yaga believed she had forgotten forever and flooding every fiber of her being with waves of bitter cold.

The Zero element she conjured used the Maiden’s fears to affect the water element in her body, and lowered her body temperature from within. The bite of the physical cold reinforced the memories that haunted her, making them seem as real as the day she had lived them.

With each Zero rune Baba Yaga added, all the work she had done until that moment crumbled. She was back to square one and faced nightmares that became scarier while she became weaker.

The cold robbed her limbs of strength as much as fear paralyzed her mind. The almighty spells she knew like the back of her hand were useless in the visions conjured by the Zero element.

The Maiden could only watch as she moved too slowly to avoid the bites of the wild animals. She saw them coming and remembered where every blow would land, but her stiffened muscles refused to obey her commands.

The only silver lining was that the moment panic made her lose control over Dread Magic, the fear and cold faded away along with the incomplete tier four spell.

On top of that, the more Zero runes she conquered, the weaker the hold of the Cursed Element on her became when conjuring spells of a lower tier.

The danger they posed and the dread they instilled in her never disappeared, not even when she conjured the first Zero rune, Jerak.

Dread Magic was akin to a volatile poison that would explode at the slightest jolt, but practice allowed Baba Yaga to become skilled at handling increasing quantities of it.

Meanwhile, Lith had never stopped working on applying the principles of Void Magic to Dread Magic, but to no avail.

’Baba Yaga was right. I don’t need to conjure two elements for my experiments because conjuring a Dread Magic spell also conjures its scattered counterpart. One element cannot exist without the other.’ He thought.

’It should make the connection between them clear, yet no matter what I try, the two little bastards just eat at each other!’

Lith worked on the first Choke rune, Bazek.

He had glimpsed the real nature of the elements thanks to his air and earth spell, Mjolnir, and hoped that everything he had learned from his first Void Magic spell would apply to their Cursed versions as well.

So far, reality had begged to differ.

No matter how deep Lith looked inside the Cursed Element, it was devoid of any trace of earth magic and incapable of turning into anything else. He could alter Choke’s shape or size, but any attempt to restore its connection with the world energy failed.

After running out of options, he had decided to try another approach and manipulate the scattered Corruption element to restore the connection between earth and air just enough to make Void Magic possible.

’Even a single drop of stable elements would be enough.’ He thought. ’All I need is a catalyst to start the transformation. Something small that can’t revert the Cursed elements to their natural state and that I can later remove with Domination.’

Lith had gained a fair degree of control over scattered Dread elements, and the relatively weak nature of chore magic was supposed to make things easy for him, yet he made no progress.

Coalescing the scattered Corruption element immediately caused Choke to go wild. The two Cursed Elements jumped at each other like magnets of opposite polarity, leaving Lith with a handful of magnetized pebbles.

Something similar happened when Lith sent sparks of Corruption into the raging storm of the Bazek rune conjured in his palm. He would fail to keep them apart, and grains of dirt fell to the ground.

Using Corruption as the main element produced the same results.

’In their normal state, opposite elements are like water and oil. They don’t mix, and you can keep them in contact.’ Lith thought. ’Cursed Elements, instead, are like fire and gasoline.

’They react violently to each other, and no matter how careful you are or how little of both you use, they always burst into flames. Do you have any suggestions, Solus?’ Lith asked, receiving no answer.

Solus had given up on her physical form for the experiment. She had returned to her stone body that she had shapeshifted into a circlet and moved on the top of Lith’s head to avoid getting hurt by the wild surges of Dread elements that accompanied his failures.

The idea was to avoid distractions and strengthen the mind link between them. In that form, Solus could see through Lith’s eyes and feel everything he felt, just like old times.

He was back to being her whole world, and that was supposed to help her focus on the conundrum at hand.

’Solus? Are you there? Is everything ok?’ He pushed his consciousness deeper in her mind than he usually would, in the telepathic equivalent of grabbing her shoulders.

’No, it’s not.’ She replied the moment his comforting touch gave her the strength to avert her eyes from the Choke rune. ’Thank the gods that until this moment you’ve kept me out of your Dread Magic experiments.

’I don’t know if I can handle the Cursed Elements. Now or ever.’ Before Lith could ask her what she meant, Solus used a partial mind fusion to show him the effects that Dread Magic had on her.

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