Chapter 3901: Precarious Balance (Part 2)

"Yes, my love." Bytra nodded. "And there’s also Lith with us, remember?"

"Hi, Big Sis." Lith waved his hand.

"I’m sorry. I don’t know what’s gotten into me." Zoreth’s mind was back into the light of the Infirmary, but she could feel the darkness of Raum’s vivisection room pulling at her.

"Don’t worry about that." Baba Yaga shook her head and conjured her tools again. "I need you to stay calm, or there’s nothing I can do."

"I don’t know if I can." Zoreth gurgled, her tears mixing with the life support fluid. "I can barely stare at those things without freaking out from this distance."

"Then close your eyes." Bytra said. "Close your eyes and only listen to my voice."

Zoreth moved her eyes from the constructs to her wife, torn between trust and fear.

"Okay." She closed her eyes shut. "Keep talking, Byt. It doesn’t matter what you say. Just don’t leave me alone."

"I won’t." Bytra replied. "Lith, Hush us, please."

A split second later, the Shadow Dragon and the Raiju were isolated in a world of their own.

"You must come back to us, Zor." Bytra said. "Think of Elysia. She misses her Auntie Zor. Or, as she calls you, Auie So."

"Did she really learn my name?" More tears diluted the life support liquid, but this time they were born out of joy.

"Yes. I’m Biba now." Bytra chuckled.

"She can almost say your name, but it will take her years to pronounce mine. Stupid Dragon names." Zoreth sniffled. "Do you have a record of Elysia calling our names?"

"Yes."

"Can you play it?" Zoreth asked.

"No." Bytra said. "I want you to hold tight, Zor. I want you to get out of that tank and let Elysia call your name in person. Can you do that for me?"

"I can try." Zoreth focused solely on Bytra’s voice, ignoring the feeling of Baba Yaga’s mana seeping inside her body while her tools prickled the Shadow Dragon’s skin. "What happened while I was away?"

While the Eldritches talked, the Red Mother emptied the vessels of the light and darkness elements in the Storage, injecting them respectively into the Eldritch and the troll sides.

The sudden and massive influx of their missing counterpart neutralized both Cursed Elements and temporarily brought their struggle to a halt. Baba Yaga’s breathing technique now encountered no resistance as it moved past the outermost layers of the black and the white holes.

Or rather, what until that moment had looked like a black and a white hole.

’Well, this explains a thing or two.’ She thought.

The Eldritch side was actually a black sun surrounded by a ring comprised of multiple black threads, each carrying a small flame along its orbit. Yet the black sun emitted no light, absorbing it instead.

The Eldritch life force was akin to a massive gravity well that sucked everything in. Even the black threads wouldn’t have been able to escape and would have remained invisible under the surface of the black sun if not for their connection with the troll side.

Zoreth’s second life force resembled a finely cut gemstone wrapped in a spool of white wire. The troll side that shone with an inner light so dense that it was almost solid.

The gravity well dragged the gemstone as hard as the gemstone’s radiance struggled to escape, keeping the distance between them constant. The two life forces interacted solely via the threads, pushing and pulling them in a violent tug of war.

The threads changed color according to which life force they were closer to, switching from black to white. The conflicting energies constantly eroded the threads, and many of them snapped every second, unable to bear the tension.

The Eldritch side devoured the fragments, while the troll side released new threads to make up for the lost ones, and the cycle started anew.

’Zoreth’s human aspect has developed a symbiotic relationship with the troll life force and is the key to Zoreth’s stable form. The threads syphon the Decay and inject it into the Chaos, keeping them both from self-destructing.

’Yet the threads are not strong enough to withstand the energy at play and fall apart before the two life forces can be pulled together. The broken threads are quickly replaced, but not before the Eldritch and the troll sides drift apart.

’They get closer with each thread connecting them and further apart every time a thread snaps. It’s a precarious balance that hinges on both life forces holding on the human side with the same force, which is no longer the case.’

She telepathically pointed at the upper part of the troll side, where the spool of wires was unravelling.

Part of the gem was now exposed and no longer produced threads. The remaining spool failed to keep up with the gravity well of the Eldritch side, which increased its pull the less Decay it received.

In turn, the light of the troll side between them became denser, allowing it to move away from the black star. Without enough threads to keep the balance between the two life forces, they had started to drift apart and increase the tension on the remaining threads.

The more the tension increased, the faster the threads broke and collapsed into the black sun, unravelling the human life force around the troll side. In turn, that caused a smaller number of threads to be produced and increased the tension in a vicious cycle.

’My guess is that in about seven days, the symbiotic relationship between the human aspect and the troll side will break. When that happens, the components of Zoreth’s hybrid life force will revert to their original state and she’ll explode.’

’Can’t Zoreth choose one life force like a regular hybrid?’ Tista asked.

’No, because she isn’t one.’ Baba Yaga replied. ’Her physical body is unable to contain either life force by itself. The Eldritch side would devour it, while the troll side would wither it in seconds.

’Holding in so much Decay requires the troll’s special constitution, whereas nothing alive can contain Chaos.’ Then, she felt everyone telepathically pointing at Lith and added, ’Almost nothing.’

’Still, seven days should be enough to find a cure.’ Tista said. ’If Solus focuses the tower on replenishing the Elemental Storage, we can perform an attempt per day. Maybe even more.’

’I wish you were right.’ Kalla sighed, feeling no need to ramble for once. ’Seven days mark the time before Zoreth’s body falls apart, but there is no telling when she’ll reach the point of no return.

’Her condition is constantly deteriorating, and the further apart her life forces get, the more complex the procedure to bring them close will become and the lower its chances of success.’

’Really?’ Tista had worked as a Healer for years, but Body Sculpting was a discipline rarely used and only for delicate cases where the other four tiers of Healing magic didn’t work.

Aside from the classes she had taken at the White Griffon, Tista had only practiced Body Sculpting on herself to learn how to shapeshift and under Faluel’s supervision to save Rena’s son, Falco.

’Sadly, yes.’ Faluel replied. ’Xenagrosh’s life force is collapsing, and even a treatment that would cure her now is going to become useless if her troll and Eldritch side drift away too much.’

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