Val hovered ten meters above the ground with sweat covering her brown-skinned face. Her chest heaved up and down with each breath she took. On her hand were a few burnt marks, along with two on her cheeks. The end of her white hair was charcoal and it crumbled to ashes when wind blew past her face. The storm and hail had died down around her, leaving nothing but warm and gentle air. The frozen ground had thawed, the fire and molten rock resumed their usual business, unfrozen. The two Flame-Born Knights lay dead, their remains vanished like an extinguished fire after Val tore their chest open with her ice. The fight was harder than she had predicted, and much harder than facing just one of them. She had to remain vigilant and aware of her surrounding in case one of them tried to sneak up on her. They actually came pretty close to killing her a few times, but alas, she was stronger and luck was on her side. A grin crept on her face like the smile of a madman. She never felt that kind of satisfaction in her long life, the satisfaction of revenge. It was sweet but not long-lasting. The realization that threats still loomed like a mountain took her joy away. And she felt empty in her heart, the place where anger resided once was hollow. An explosion yanked her out of her mind and her heart. She turned around and realized that Theo was not there. He was not where she told him to stay, nor near her, nor anywhere she could see him. Fear and dread filled her once more as her mind played out the worst possible outcome, the image of him dying in her arms just like Jack. Her heart raced, and no matter how hard she tried to put the thought away, it kept coming back to her, more gruesome and tragic than the last. She flew towards the source of the sound faster than she had ever flown. But she stopped as soon as she flew. "No." The word escaped her mouth along with tears out of her eyes. "No. No!" Her flight spell disappeared and she fell to her knees. Her body felt so weak she could barely stand after that. "NO!" She screamed out after seeing Theo's equipment scattered around, but he was nowhere to be found. His sword, breastplate, torn shirt and trouser, six pouches that she noticed he never took off, and a pendant bearing the name of him and a woman, Mary. Val let out a maddened screech like that of a banshee. The air froze around her and her icy glare fell upon a massive werewolf not too far from where she stood. Consumed by fury and despair, she failed to realize that Theo's equipment didn't show any sign of harm or damage, and she failed to realize that the werewolf wore the same ring that Theo carried around. The werewolf was facing away from her, crawling and waiting for something or someone. Val didn't care what it was doing or who it was waiting for. She didn't care about anything anymore in that moment. Spire of ice appeared from the ground and pierced the werewolf in the stomach. A lesser creature would have their body split in two, but the a was no lesser creature. The spire raised his body to the sky and hung him there. The werewolf howled in pain. He thrashed around, but the ice rendered him unable to move. His wound froze and the ice spread all across his body. His flesh, bone, blood, and cell crystalized by Val's cold fury. Realizing his powerlessness and possible death, he ceased his struggle. Instead, he turned his head towards Val and reached his hand out. "V-val, h-help me!" His voice was rough and his tone dripping with malice, yet Val couldn't have mistaken that voice for someone's else. "T-theo?" She gasped when the realization hit her hard. No, impossible, there was no way he could turn into a werewolf. The last time she checked, he didn't have any lycanthropy or anything similar to that, so how ... "Val!" He groaned in pain as most of his body turned to ice. "The ... ring." He raised his left pinky finger, showing her the cursed ring. "Destroy it! Cut it off!" "A-ah. Just wait!" The spire of ice below him shattered and he crashed to the ground. His flesh returned to flesh and his blood flowed again. Val rushed to him with all her might, but when she got close, he lashed out and swung his arms wildly. His claw scratched her cheek. "Don't ... Come near! I can't control it!" He screamed out. "Cut it ... cut it from afar!" Theo struggled to resist his own body. His beastly desire and bloodlust had reached its peak. He bit his own arm, tore his own limbs, and stabbed himself with his own claw to calm his bloodlust. Val's body and mind froze, she didn't know what to do. Even with all her experience as an adventurer and her long life, she hasn't seen anything like this before. The massive hole in his stomach regenerated in a matter of second. All the wound he inflicted on himself disappeared after a moment, like it never existed to begin with. "Cut it, Val!" Theo screamed. His voice turned more beastly and his form more monstrous by the second. He wanted to cut off the finger or even the arm where he put the ring on if he could, but the will of the ring didn't allow him to. He needed her help. Val hesitated. She knew the ring was the one that gave him his regeneration and werewolf form, and cutting it would most probably return him to his original form. She could cut it easily with him restraining his own body. But what would happen if she cut it when there was a fatal wound on his body. Would it heal before he returns human, or would the regeneration cease the moment she cut the ring off? "Val! cutlrhgrtjebjdjjr." His speech became incoherent. No, more precisely, he already lost his ability to form human speech. The madness and bloodlust began to overtake the last of his sane mind. "Aghhh!" Theo screamed, a human scream. Val was taken aback. She was confused, but that last scream was definitely a human scream. A red flash appeared for an instant and Theo's body fell to the ground with a loud thump. He transformed back to his human form, though the transformation was not a painless one. He screamed his lung out, loud enough to be heard from far away. Val was about to take a step towards him when an arm wrapped around her shoulder. When she turned her head, she saw a devilishly handsome man with a blazing crimson hair and ultramarine eyes. All the emotion whirling in her heart and all the confusion plaguing her mind affected her so much that she didn't notice the man coming. It would be a fatal mistake if this was a battlefield or if the man was an enemy. Luckily for her, the man was not. The man's face - one that rivaled Theo - combined with his gallant figure could make any woman's heart flutter, yet Val's heart didn't even budge. Maybe it was the confusion that affected her, maybe it was something else. She ignored the man and ran towards Theo. His body was unmoving on the ground, battered and bloodied from his self-inflicted wounds. Like Val had expected, his regeneration power vanished the moment he transformed back to human. "Oy, oy, not going to give me a kiss for my help?" Val ignored the complaint from the man. "Not even a thanks?" Val turned Theo's body so that his face was positioned upward. His breathing and heartbeat were getting weaker with each beat. "Hang on! I won't let you die here." Val put her hands on his chest and cast her strongest healing spell. His wounds began to close, though not as quick as she hoped it would. She gritted her teeth. The scene before her was almost the exact replica of Jack's death. The thought frustrates her endlessly. She wouldn't let him die, not like she let Jack die. But she was lacking. She was not a specialist in healing other and her affinity with it was really bad, both contributed to her weak and slow healing spell. This fact brought her frustration to a new height, so much so that it began to make her lose her focus. "Calm down." A woman's voice came from somewhere near. Val didn't even bother to look at her, she needed to focus. "I am calm!" She yelled with all her anger and frustration in her voice. "You are not calm at all." Val gritted her teeth and stared at the source. "How the hell do you expect me to calm do-" She swallowed her voice mid-sentence when she saw a priestess helping her heal Theo. "The effectiveness of a healing spell is tied to the caster's emotion, you won't be able to heal him like that." The priestess said with a calm yet serious tone. She wasn't in a rush, yet wasn't relaxed either. As much as Val wanted to retort to that statement, she was in no position to do so. The priestess was correct. Val observed the priestess' healing miracle. It was very different than Val's own. It was complex and delicate, like fixing a hole in a shirt by knitting, whereas Val's magic was akin to fixing a wall by dumping rocks on it. By the time Theo's wounds were healed, he already lost quite the amount of blood. Not too much to make it lethal, but still enough to render him unconscious. Val let out a sigh of relief after he assured his survival. There was a lot of things she wanted to complain and be angry about, but the fact that Theo survived washed it all away with relief. First thing first, however, "Thank you ... " She looked at the priestess that helped her. The priestess was drenched in sweat. Her looks showed how tired and weary she was. It took a good chunk of her mana to heal Theo. "No problem, my job is to help people." She said with a smile. Val replied her smile then looked around. Without her noticing there were now four women around her, not including the priestess. The man from before was nowhere to be found. "Anyway, you are?" She asked the priestess. She wasn't bothered by the other women since the priestess wasn't bothered by it. "Elicia, I'm one of the Chosen One's 'companion'," She answered with a light hint of blush on her cheeks. "The Chosen One?" She realized something. "Wait, are you saying that the man from before is the Chosen One?" Val had heard some rumors about the Chosen One from quite a while back, about how handsome and powerful he was, and how he acted around women, though she paid no heed to such vague rumor. Elicia nodded her head before turning it towards another woman with neck-length purple hair. "Elizabeth, where's Setanta?" Elizabeth grabbed her own forehead and sighed. "What do you think? Just count how many of us are here." "Ohh." The priestess' cheek grew even redder. Val believed the rumor now. Though no matter what kind of a man the Chosen One was, she was thankful and indebted to him. She took Theo's left hand, specifically looking at his severed pinky finger where the ring had been. The Chosen One cut Theo's finger when Val couldn't do anything, when she was too afraid to do anything. If the Chosen didn't cut the ring in time, who knows what would have happened to Theo. Theo's severed finger was still bleeding, the wound never fully closed no matter how hard Val tried to heal it. It was cut by the legendary cursed spear. Any wound caused by it would never heal for at least sixty days and sixty night. "Is he your husband?" Elicia asked. Her sudden question threw Val off guard, she didn't expect that. "N-no." She stuttered. "Lover then?" Val answered with a shook of her head. "Really? The way you look at him, I was sure that you are more than just companion." Val made a bitter smile, then cast her eyes downward. "I ... wouldn't even call us that," she said with a hint of self-derision. "Hell, I almost kill him just yesterday, without thinking, without hesitating. I hated him, but now, I don't know anymore." She didn't know why she told this to Elicia. It was an embarrassing thing to admit and definitely not the kind of thing she would have said if she was the same person as she was the day before. But she felt that Elicia, no, those women around her, they could understand her feeling. "I was angry at him for many many things and I swore that if he creates more problem for me or my friends, I would kill him with my own hand. But when I saw him getting hurt, I ..." This talk, the way she poured out her feeling through words, it made her feels like a girl again, troubled by her own feeling. Elizabeth sat next to Val and grabbed her shoulder. "Yeah, I know that feeling." She sighed in resignation. "Looks like we're stuck with the worst kind of man in the world." "So it is true what the rumor said, that you are all the Chosen One's-" "Women?" Elizabeth cut Val's word. "Yes. I bet your man too have many women around him, no?" "I won't deny that." Elizabeth sighed once again, for the third time already. "Well, you're in a hell full of jealousy and envy," She leaned her body to Val. "and there's no escaping it now. No matter what you do, no matter how hard you convince yourself or how much other people try to convince you or how hard you try to hate him or try to leave him behind, you can never unlove him; you can never walk away from him. Our feeling, it's a curse really." She chuckled a little bit at the end. Val stared at her. The way she spoke it, she wasn't just spouting nonsense or something that she thought would happen, she experienced it firsthand. Elizabeth smiled bitterly, knowing what Val was thinking by her looks alone. "I've been with Setanta longer than anyone," She glanced the women around her. "and probably longer than any woman your man has. By now I'm pretty sure that my feeling for him is not normal, and I mean it in a bad way. It's more akin to magic, or curse, or a forced fate." "If you're so conscious of it, why don't you leave him or do something about it?" Elizabeth sighed, again. "What kind of curse could be broken just by realizing you are afflicted by it? And do you think I've never tried getting away from him, or do something with my feeling?" Val realized that Elizabeth feeling for Setanta was the same way she felt about Theo the last few days. It did feel like a curse or magic, and in no way resemble a natural feeling. Though her exact experience might differ, Val could understand her. Before Elizabeth could continue her story, Theo jolted awake. He looked bewildered, confused, and panicked with sweat trickling down his white skin. He looked around, surprised at the sudden appearance of five women other than Val. "Theo," Val called with a soft voice, barely perceptible even to her own ears. Though her voice was soft, her eyes were fierce with anger. Val jumped on him, sitting on his chest while her face hovered above his. "You damned, reckless, weak, moronic, womanizer!" She grabbed the collar of his armor and brought his face near her. "Why didn't you follow my order, why do you have to fight that knight alone? Why did you think that wearing that cursed ring is a good idea? You-you almost died!" Fear, sadness, and, anger rushed out from her like a flood. Val raised her fist but stopped it before it hit his face. Her arms might look slender, but the strength behind her punch could easily kill Theo in his condition. "I'm sorry." His voice was still small, showing just how little he had recovered. "I don't need your sorry. I ... I-" She took a deep breath. "I want your promise, I want you to swear that you won't do something reckless like that again. Not later when we storm our way to the summit, not when we close the portal, not ever again!" "I can't promise you that" "Why?! Why are you so eager to die, why are you so eager to take unnecessary risks?" "You don't know Calamity." He said with a hint of fear in his voice, one that never existed before when he mentioned Calamity. Before this, Theo never had any fear of the threat of Calamity. He used to have a full confidence with the special item he carried, that he could overcome any obstacle with those items. He used to think that even if Calamity stepped into this world, he could just use the golden hammer to summon his friend and defeat her. But being controlled by the will of the ring made him realize one major flaw in his plan; he never took the drawback of those items seriously. Just like with the ring, which he underestimates the power of its will, he underestimated the time to activate the golden hammer. Five minutes might not seem like a long time, but most fights didn't last five minutes. And in the face of Calamity's overwhelming power, he didn't have any means to stall her that long. He has to be reckless, to take risk, to- "I don't care!" Val yelled at him like a child. "I don't care how powerful you think our enemy is, I'm going to wipe the floor with her and claim all the glory for myself!" She `poked him between the eyes. "So you just wait behind me, don't move, don't get in my way, don't engage any enemy, just ... watch. Do you hear me?" The ground rumbled as fire column rose from the caldera and ripped the sky apart like the claw of some giant monster. Everyone held their breath as they watched the unnatural phenomenon unfolded before them. The fire was not normal, and the change in the air signaled something ominous was coming, and soon. Theo moved Val from his chest and stood up. She didn't resist his push. "Let's go, we don't have that much time left." Theo stood up, equipped his armor, equipment, and his sword, but stopped a moment before he touched it. He noticed something was different with his left hand and realized that he was missing a finger, though he was not surprised by it. He at least had expected this when he couldn't control the beastly bloodlust within him. "Val, where's my ring?" Val stared at him with a dumbfounded look on her face. She didn't understand why the hell Theo wanted to do anything with the ring after all of that. "I'm keeping it. There's no way in seven hell I'll return it to you after all that shitshow." Theo smiled lightly. "Just make sure you keep that thing safe for me, it's important." Setanta suddenly showed up behind with a woman beside him. "Hey, planning to leave me behind?" He asked no one in particular. He then looked at Theo. "Theo Gladium, remember me, Your one and only true rival?" Theo stare turned towards Setanta. He knew that he was THE Chosen One, but to still have a nonchalant attitude without any tension in his voice at a time like this only made Setanta looks like an idiot. "Sorry, I don't remember a man's face and name well." Setanta burst into a fit of laughter. "Oh my god!" He still couldn't stop his laughter. "You're really good, Theo Gladium." He patted Theo on the shoulder. "As expected from my rival." Theo ignored Set endless laughing and chuckling and his other ridiculous antics and walked to the front of the group. "Anyway, Let's go." ------ Up above the mountain on the Fire Realm side of the open portal, Calamity stood quietly as always, watching the world she was about to conquer with her blazing ruby eyes. She watched as the summoner on the other side of the portal danced his dance and sung his song and chanted his chant. His move was enchanting and elegant, almost divine, but she wasn't impressed. His voice was heavenly and the verse that he chanted was poetic and filled with reverence and respect for her, but she wasn't interested in the least. In her heart burned only one desire, a singular purpose that outshined and outweighed anything she had. A desire that blinded her since the day she became a Fire Lord, a chance to prove to the Fire King that she was worthy of her title. A chance to prove that she could accomplish something without the Fire King helping her, without his name following her everywhere. Everything else was of secondary importance. She sighed. It was the first thing she did other than just staring at the other world ever since the portal first opened. She was never a patient woman, her moods shifted like the flaps of fly's wings. But for this occasion only, she endured. She had prepared years for this invasion and had waited days since the portal first opened. Her patience was at its limit. The time was nigh to make her entrance to the other world, Only a few hours more. She reached out to the portal and her arms went through it, but that was it. The rest of her body still stuck in the Fire Realm. She closed her eyes and let the feeling in her arms overwhelm her. It was a strange and wondrous world indeed. The air wasn't boiling. It was cold in fact, very, very cold. A world not suited for her kin. A smile appeared on her face, a sight rarely seen even by her closest servants. "Prepare for battle!" A rumbling cheer and warcry of hundreds of thousand fire elementals shook the heaven and earth following her declaration.