A New Beginning In A Mana Apocalypse 66 Chapter 66 - Reprisal

"I'm fine." Mary told us tiredly.

I frowned at her unsure if I should believe her or not, but while the bonds did tell me that she was weakened and Emy was injured, neither seemed to be in any life threatening danger.

'What happened?' I asked Emy mentally concerned for her. If she was injured something must have happened to cause it.

'Don't worry, I am fine.' Emy replied immediately. 'I had feared the Lost Ones would try and follow you if they sensed your departure. That was why I had you make your s.p.a.ce tunnels come out here then connected them to your haven. If they tried to follow you it would lead them to me.'

'So it was the Lost Ones?' I asked her anger coursing through me, not just at them, but also at myself. If they were a mix of awakened and twisted there was no reason they couldn't have s.p.a.ce abilities. I just hadn't thought of that, in truth I hadn't thought of a lot of things lately.

'It is fine, there was nothing you could have done to help me. They sent the flood dragon through but I sent it packing.' Emy told me.

My anger paused as I registered what she had said. 'You beat the flood dragon?' I asked her surprised.

'While they are powerful, flood dragons' rely on their innate dragon fear to incapacitate their foes, it doesn't work on me, or any other plant for that matter. Take that away and it wasn't hard to scare it away. It was its parting gift of flames that is causing me trouble.' she replied. 'Sore loser.' she grumbled.

I nearly laughed at that but contained myself.

'I drew some energy from my off shoots to help speed up the healing process.' she told me. 'Mary should be back to normal in a few hours.'

'Will they attack you again?' I asked worried.

'Unlikely, the flood dragon should be their greatest strength, and while its flame has weakened me, it is not easy for the flood dragon to use that flame, it will have to rest for a while before it can come at me again.' Emy replied.

I bit my lip in frustration. Then looked around. My girls and the twins were all looking at Mary with concern and glancing at me occasionally.

A loud scream drew my attention away from Mary. On the other side of Michael's group I spotted a flash of silver. I took off in that direction only to relax when I pa.s.sed Michael's group and realized the silver was Monica. She had the void girl in her arms and seemed uncertain what do do as everyone was looking at her fearfully.

"Over here." I called out to her.

Monica followed the sound of my voice then smiled when she saw me and cheerfully skipped over to my side. While it was entertaining it completely didn't fit the image of a terrifying twisted and made several people look confused.

"We are all over here." I told Monica as I gently took the void girl from her arms.

Monica nodded then gave me a kiss on the cheek before spotting my other wives and taking off to join them as I followed behind her.

While I had only been away for a moment, Mary was already sitting up and looking much better than she had a moment ago.

"Are you alright?" Megan asked her still seeming to be worried.

Mary nodded. "I am, Emy just needed some extra strength to help her suppress the dragon fire." she told us.

"Suppress? She told me she needed it to heal." I replied.

"It is the same thing." Mary replied.

"Karen." I called out then handed the void girl who still seemed completely dead to the world to her.

"I am going to try and help her out." I told them.

"Master.." Mary started to object but I created the s.p.a.ce tunnel in record time and was gone before she could tell me not to go.

As soon as I arrived in Emy's haven I could feel tell that she was having more trouble then even Mary implied. A third of her branches and leaves had been scorched and small flames were still burning all over her plant form.

"You shouldn't have come master. The flood dragon might not be able to come here, but the Lost Ones can. They can do little to me, but they could kill or imprison you!" she told me.

I rolled my eyes. "Do you really think I could just sit back and let you handle this on your own. How long did you think you could keep the pain from me?" I asked her in return. Being so close to her I could feel that she was in a lot of pain and trying to keep me from being aware of it. Now that I knew she saw no reason to hide it. Agonizing wasn't the word to describe it, it seemed too soft. Instead I would say that the feeling I was getting from her could be described as burning in h.e.l.l.

I wasn't sure exactly how I could help, but as I had elemental abilities, my mother's elemental lord especially. I thought I could at least help remove fire from her branches, and at the worst trim off the parts of her that were burning.

Hearing my plan Emy was incredibly grateful. While tr.i.m.m.i.n.g her would be painful for her, it was far better than letting the fire continue to consume her branches until it burned out or she could suppress it.

With a plan in mind I jogged to the closest flame. It burned a lot hotter than I thought it would, but I added some water into my wind armor, cooling it down to protect myself as I got closer.

I understood that the fire wasn't normal, a flood dragon wouldn't have to rest after using a normal flame, but I still hoped I could manipulate the fire despite that. Before I could try that I needed to remove the fire from Emy, given its level of persistence I had a feeling that the fire would remain even after I cut it off of her. So freeing Emy from the fire was my first priority, then I could try experimenting with the fire, maybe I could learn something from it and strengthen the flames I was able to use.

Because of the intense heat of the flames I had to use a lot of energy to keep myself cool as I approached each flame, and as there were at least three dozen flames remaining on Emy I was quick, decisive, and honestly I just hacked off the branch that was burning when I got as close to it as I could then threw it away from her before moving on. It wasn't pretty, and while I felt a spike of pain from Emy everytime I cut one of her branches, the accompanying relief when the burning sensation disappeared told me I had made the right decision.

I am not sure how long it took, there was no sun to judge time by, but it felt like a while before I had removed all the flames that were burning Emy and with the flames gone I could tell she felt much better, and even a bit sheepish that she had intended to handle everything on her own. Without my help she would have been able to suppress the flames given some time, but it would have taken a while and she would have lost more of her branches than what I had cut away. A lot more.

Once she was free of the fire I was willing to take my time to try and learn more about the flame, given its level of persistence, it would benefit me a great deal if I could figure out a way to imitate even a portion of that with my own flames, especially if I could then transfer that into the black lighting that I formed using my fire energy. Persistent black lightning could be an incredible addition to my a.r.s.enal. At least it would be if I could control it or didn't have to worry about friendly fire.

Rather than gathering the fire up into one big pile I decided to approach one of the smaller flames and see how much I was able to manipulate the fire to start with. I sat down near the flame then stared into it while accessing my fire ability. I had no idea what I was doing but I was hoping it would come to me like everything else had so far.

Unfortunately dragon fire, even the weaker version that a flood dragon can conjure, was not such an easily understood element. I tried to control it, move it, break it down, mix other elements to get the same feel as I did from the dragon fire, but nothing was working, nothing I did even phased the dragon fire as it burned on what was left of Emy's branch. Finally after who knows how long the dragon fire finished consuming the branch it was on then died out on its own.

Sighing with regret I looked around for another flame only to realize that there were only a few fires left that hadn't burned out and they were all about to die. I had run out of ideas on how to manipulate or control the flames yet that didn't mean I was willing to give up yet.

I stood up and rushed over to the closest flame and stared into it as it started to burn out. As it flickered and died I still had no new ideas. A moment later and all the dragon fire had died out. I didn't consider it a loss, Emy was fine and was no longer in any danger, but I didn't gain the best rewards of the situation and that disappointed me a bit. Did I have to bond a dragon before I could understand dragon fire? I sure hoped not. Even though Emy said the Dragon Fear was a large part of the flood dragon's strength, that didn't mean I was willing to face it. Even if I did find a way to block the Dragon Fear. Something about fighting a being hundreds of time my size bothered me. Even in my beast form I would still feel like an ant against it.

I didn't like this feeling any more the second time as I did the first, but I knew there were things out there that I wasn't a match for and I needed to remember that despite the string of good luck and power ups I had been having.

I comforted Emy a bit, or maybe she comforted me then I made a s.p.a.ce tunnel back to my haven. There were things we needed to do, I needed another haven I could fall back to in case things went bad, especially since the Lost Ones could also create s.p.a.ce tunnels. Plus I doubted we got many supplies out of that distribution center, and with even more survivors with us I knew we needed them.