The Ogre Strength Fairy and the Eldest 'Son'-Chapter 351 - Complicated Cultivator Conversations About The Contradictions Of Closure

Chapter 351: Chapter 351 - Complicated Cultivator Conversations About The Contradictions Of Closure

Not really recognizing the smaller cultivator’s changed state, Leysah asked questions in confusion. She may have been an adult, but she felt like a vulnerable child as her wrists swiped at her eyes.

"What is that feeling? Where does it come from?"

"Some things remain mysteries even to Divinities, let alone lowly cultivators. I’ll recommend your inclusion to Qatrand. Your skills are too valuable to dismiss over... subtle spiritual anomalies."

The woman bowed with so much relieved tension in her posture that she almost fainted forward. Even joining her Guild had not been such a rollercoaster of emotions!

"Thank you. For giving me more chances."

"Of course. Everyone deserves another chance, especially when they did not mean malice through the result. You can go now."

Elua stood there, spinning webs of new schemes and corrections to old ones. The blueprint of her soul, of her devotions toward Qat, remained as solid as ever. Her past and other connections were still picked apart, acknowledged, and wielded for only one true use.

"Leysah."

As the curved-blade wielder turned to leave, a monotone voice stopped her. All that tension that had left the woman returned, like a mountain was pressing around her from all sides. She felt instinctively like turning back around was a bad idea - and she wasn’t even sure if she could.

’Something tells me that I can’t...’

"...Yes?"

"I would ask you to protect Qatrand from now on. It’s only a request and your refusal will not affect my recommendation."

She meant her words... though she definitely *would* tell her spouse the answer she gave - especially if the woman seemed to directly refuse! After all, Leysah now had the majority of her own will freed up now from the compulsive forces of her past. Saying no with that being the case-

"Protect him? From... what?"

"Hm... from whatever this Descent brings. Wars create unexpected threats. Trusted allies are always in demand. Just consider it the idle worries of the person who loves someone more than anything else in the world."

Leysah nodded slowly, not sure why she was being trusted with any of that after earlier. She was also a bit curious why she didn’t feel a call to agree. Now that she thought of it, there wasn’t really a desire to turn around at all even though the heiress was talking to her.

’Usually I have to fight to look away. Did she... do something to help me?’

"I understand duty to comrades. You have nothing to worry about."

"Good. That’s all I needed to hear."

That feeling of pressure released, before a spike of fear surged up her spine. If she hadn’t felt a compulsion to turn around before, she certainly felt one to run away now. Even though the little speaker seemed to have been a number of yards away before, the sound of their voice was now right behind her.

"Because if you ever think to raise your arms against my good, pure, caring Qat? I’ll break them."

A flowing little spin placed the silver dressed cultivator in front of the shaking taller woman. Cold death sitting over her shoulder as warm breath struck her was like nothing she’d ever experienced or ever wanted to again. Which was the whole point.

The memory was going to be sealed tight in a fragment only meant to open in dire circumstances in the first place - so Elua thought a little more ’truth’ could only be a good thing.

"Now, you may be thinking that sounds like a joke or hyperbole. But I’m more than willing to let you take a swing at me right now so I can prove that it’s not... and make this threat all that much more effective through a practical demonstration."

⟠ ⟠ ⟠

Sensing her need for solitude, the group of birds and single fox sat around the edges of the grounds. She’d told the latter to just stay in the room, but it wasn’t as attached to Qat as her - and it ’escaped’ the moment the tall girl opened the door to go atten to her own business.

The heiress sat on a simple bench, mint eyes tracking the dissipating morning mist and equating them to the fading spiritual fragments she had detected in Leysah. Not merely lingering echoes, but actual pieces of her former disciple’s self shattered spirit.

"Foolish girl. Your spirit fled its container before I got there, so there was no such ’map’ to follow for me then."

Broken, rearranged, causing no lack of problems for the person she would be reborn as... But recognizable to one who had known the original pattern of her most promising disciple. Hating her for so long only made that image stronger, whereas so many she’d let go were dim memories.

"Trying to protect me, because you thought I wouldn’t listen to you. So in the end, you die - and I still lost a partner I never should have had. Who won in that situation, huh?"

She spoke only to an illusion conjured by herself, a real ghost of the past kneeling in a set of leather armor and bowing her head in the spitting image of the cultivator that had left the grounds.

The former disciple’s betrayal had been the cornerstone of countless bitter memories. Serving as validation of every wall she’d built against anyone that sought aid or learning. A method of hedging her expectations that she still employed, but in what she recognized as more open form.

"You never did have good timing or luck. For all your talent and potential. But you know, for all your choices and mine put me through... I have to thank you. Not the *current* you, the one I just instilled with a fear of me so deep that she may never look directly at my face again."

Elua extracted a small piece of polished obsidian from her satchel. In it, she caught her own reflection - young and seemingly ’innocent’. A face that seemed like it had never known the centuries of isolation her spirit had endured.

"This you, a nonexistent figment. The betrayer I’ve hated. I apologize wholeheartedly."

Rapid little sigils formed in the material, carved tight as can be as her essence flickered in ways that should be impossible for her current accumulation of the energy. But all things had rules and all rules were made to be bent.

"Because Qat - you would have loved her, by the way - is an amazing person. She loves me with too much heart. Understands me with too much soul. And the muscles... yes, I am still into that hobby. I shouldn’t have given you a pseudo personality..."

Waving her hand and dispersing the disgusted looking face of the cultivator who always thought that the soft feminine was a superior form if you were going to like women in the first place - a wholly unrefined perspective from someone as straight as a fine sword’s spine - the illusionist hopped up to her feet.

"What else did I misunderstand? Does it really matter? I’m here now, that’s all I care about. Being here for her."

That her former disciple might have been sacrificed somewhat willingly, might have been trying to warn her about her partner’s true nature in her last moments - it changed everything and nothing. Provided a closure she needed but changed no life directions.

"I still would have done almost the exact same thing to the curved blade wielding woman with your face, even if I learned you were the thieving cat I took you for. But I can’t fix what you did to yourself - only she can."

Her primary Skydancer hopped off its perch and glided to her shoulder. Rubbing its head against her absently raised hand, she stroked its feathers. Just like she used to do to another companion.

What was ’wrong’ with Leysah’s Astralism was a deeply defensive adaptation her former disciple never had in life. A spiritual response to the very sort of manipulation that had led to her downfall. Trusting too much on the other side of the connection, she must have felt that it must never happen again.

’Ironic, that in death... her spirit finally developed the protection she needed before. To not open her energy to others more than any other cultivator. A little sad, though. To think that man left his mark on us both for so long.’

In her other hand, she spun the slowly completed tool. Dull eyes stared at the obsidian, knowing it as the sort of weapon that shouldn’t exist. But with more failsafes than most would understand how to place.

"I feel like someone won’t let me get away with this, but I’m willing to argue creating a single one is fine. Now the question is how to get her to take it..."

With a shrug, the brunette decided that she’d just have to get Qat to offer it... and make sure that Leysah did not know who it was from. Just like she would never know she carried around something that would squash the soul of that man if ever he approached her.

"Assuming he reincarnated to the same rough time frame. I have no idea how this works, even having met another one. She died millenia ago, from my perspective. So the chances I get to kill him again are slim to none!"

⟠ ⟠ ⟠

Curled up in his bed, on the other side of the world entirely, an old man on his fourth century of life shivered in his sleep. A Peak Primalist in spirit and essence, but only First Echelon in physical energy thanks to a rather detrimental Physique that actually tore at his base when he was forced to use it. His path through this life had been harder than most.

Waking from a nightmare of his own making, he recalled again those terrible last moments of his end. Of being melted by acid inside of a healing formation once he had finally been caught. Over, and over.

His torturer not caring if he would ever break, just wanting to extend the pain just like he’d done to her lover.

He’d once tried to drown his eventual killer in the ocean to no avail, after slaying the next person she thought she could love other than him. The ocean had boiled that day as two peak Defier’s fought on lands that mortals and lower realm cultivators lived on.

And he thought he had gotten away.

But she was relentless, and she always showed up eventually. Some day. He’d been waiting every day of his reborn life for that to be true once again. Every third night, he’d wake drenched in sweat, knowing she was coming.

And tonight, he was more sure than ever.

He knew he was a monster and never claimed otherwise in his heart... though he still liked to make himself look good in the plays he wrote so long ago, when the memories were freshest. Acting in any way he needed to to get what he wanted was a matter of course - and that inner desire changed from time to time.

But ’that person’ was something else entirely. She only cared about one thing until it was gone. Then she cared about nothing at all... except avenging the loss until time ended.

"She’s here. She loves someone again. She’s going to make sure I can’t hurt them. She-"

The man was so sure on this night, that his old heart simply could not take it. A famous playwright died with no one to mourn him or dispose of the body.

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