Daniella fell onto her butt, her back resting against a slanted rock slab in the middle of the crater, heavy breaths escaping her lips.
Her grimoires dropped weakly to the ground, their glow fading as her eyelids struggled to stay open over her amber eyes while she looked up to et Jamie’s gaze, a dry laugh slipping out.
"...hello...Jamie... long ti no see."
Jamie pressed his lips together, taking a deep breath as he forced himself to calm his anger before replying.
"Has it?"
"It has... at least since the last ti we spoke face to face," Daniella managed to say.
Silence followed her words, broken only by the faint crackle of the flas drifting through the air until Jamie finally spoke again.
"I told you to use it in moderation."
At that, Daniella laughed softly.
"For the past few months, I’ve been hunted by millions across the universe. Moderation was a luxury I couldn’t afford."
Jamie’s frown deepened as he rembered how long she’d been chased by bounty hunters and the subordinates of higher powers.
A mont later, he sighed and pressed his fingers to his temple, nodding lightly.
"Fair enough. Considering your situation, moderation was indeed an expensive luxury."
She smiled wryly, and Jamie crouched down so their eyes t.
"Still, it’s been a billion years, huh?" he said.
Daniella nodded, her wry smile remaining as she answered,
"Yeah. I still rember the day we placed the seal. If I hadn’t known better, I’d have thought you were trying to get yourself killed."
"Oh, please. Did you forget that I’m immortal?" Jamie replied with a light chuckle, his attempt at humour managing to draw a laugh from Daniella despite her terrible condition.
"And did you forget that you’d only been a Hybrid for, what, nine million years at the ti? You’d never faced sothing on that level before, so how was I supposed to trust your immortality would ho—cough!!"
Daniella coughed up blood mid-speech, drawing in laboured breaths while Jamie watched in silence.
"In the end, I turned out to be the best man for the situation," he finally said after a mont.
"True. Who would’ve guessed you’d beco an Envoy too? And of so strange Cosmic Force that I still can’t wrap my head around, even after a billion years."
Her words brought back Jamie’s mories of the day he gained his status as the ’Envoy of Balance’, of his encounter with the mysterious being known throughout the Cosmos as the ’Judge of the End’, the one who had made him an Envoy of the Cosmic Force and granted him his Imperial Privileges.
These Imperial Privileges were essentially pseudo-Conceptual Authorities comparable to those of the Eternals and Aggressors, and it was through their imnse power that he could dominate the surrounding space, preventing even the Grand Supres, who currently surpassed him in power, from leaving.
It wasn’t his own power stopping them, but the power of the Concepts of the Cosmos, and those Grand Supres were nowhere near strong enough to resist what even the Eternals only ’maintained’.
"Maybe everything was all for that day. This thing called Fate is quite the bitch, after all," Jamie said, making Daniella scoff.
"Oh, please, as if sothing like fate even affects you," she muttered.
"It doesn’t now, but it sure did back then," Jamie replied, then sighed, lips pressing together.
"After all this while, the anger should have simred down by now, right?"
Jamie’s question made Daniella blink montarily, and then she lowered her gaze to her chest, her eyes looking at sothing within as she replied.
"It simred down long ago. Simply just refused to awaken."
"But that changed. You took my power precisely because of that, didn’t you? Because the seal had started to weaken, and an awakening was drawing near."
Jamie’s words made Daniella nod slowly, her fingers digging into the ground as she replied,
"Yes. That’s why I took your power. To maintain the seal, even if only for a second longer."
Lifting her bloodied, sand-covered palms, she continued, "In the end, I managed to maintain it for five thousand years."
She then looked at him, her amber eyes eting his as she asked,
"I tried, didn’t I?"
"Yes," Jamie replied. "You really did."
There was little context to their exchange, so no one, not even the other two Hybrids nearby, could make sense of what they were discussing.
Then again, anyone who could have possibly understood had long since died.
Not just dead, but completely erased from existence, with no trace left in anyone’s mory or record, except for the two of them.
Jamie had many secrets, but among them, three stood out as the most significant at present.
The first was his full True Na, known only to Miranda.
The second was the context of their conversation.
The third was the fact that his power had been stolen.
The fact that Jamie would rather let the loss of his power beco public than allow anyone to discover this showed just how seriously he regarded it.
Unfortunately, due to the actions of those whose bodies were now restrained by Miranda’s cosmic energy, that secret was on the verge of becoming public knowledge.
Jamie was understandably furious.
A billion years of effort, both his and the woman’s before him, all reduced to nothing by the greed, arrogance, and stupidity of others.
Speaking with her was his way of reining in the fury he felt over what was inevitably about to happen in just a few minutes.
"I suppose it’s partly my fault. If I hadn’t been slacking and had reached Ultimate, then the upper limit of what you could use would’ve been higher."
Jamie wouldn’t deny that he’d grown complacent.
Comfort with his power at the peak of the Zenith Haven Realm, with very few existences posing actual threats, had bred complacency within him.
At so point, he’d even begun to question whether attaining Ultimate was necessary anymore.
He was Immortal, imnsely powerful, and influential across the Cosmos and the countless universes within.
Wasn’t that enough?
Was there really a need to attempt sothing that could risk losing all he had and force him to start over again?
He’d already failed multiple tis, and each ti he’d lost vast amounts of power and had to recover, so why try again?
His first failure had been bad enough that even an Eternal who couldn’t tolerate his existence had looked at him with pity and just walked away, even if it ant passing up the chance to be rid of him for good.
The second attempt ended in a similar failure, leaving cracks in the core of his immortal soul.
The third ti, he’d flipped out in rage from the ntal strain of the conflicting paths he’d been trying to tread to Ultimate.
Any ’effort’ he’d made to reach Ultimate after that had been nothing more than a show, an elaborate display of self-deception.
Now, he was beginning to think all of this current ss could’ve been avoided if he’d simply kept attempting to reach Ultimate until he succeeded.
At his mutter, Daniella’s eyes widened in shock before she burst into strained laughter.
"Are you insane? I barely died trying to take just this much. If you had reached Ultimate, I wouldn’t have even dared to lay a finger on your power."
Jamie chuckled at her words, then sighed as he rose to his feet and spoke.
"There’s no point anymore..."
To this, she replied,
"Take it... You have no idea how difficult it is to keep all of that contained in this weak body of mine."
She took a deep breath as she spoke, and Jamie shook his head.
"In terms of Existence Realm, sure, you’re certainly weak."
That much was undeniable.
"But soone who managed to maintain this seal for over a billion years without using a trace of Cosmic Energy, as you have, is by no ans weak."
Jamie extended his hand toward her, his voice carrying nothing but genuine respect as he said,
"Thank you, Daniella."
"You’re welco. I’d be counting on you for damage control."
Daniella’s words made Jamie chuckle, cosmic energy flowing into his tongue as he commanded,
|Return|
The ground trembled the mont he spoke, and Daniella groaned in pain, her bones audibly cracking. Under the shocked gazes of everyone present, she scread as a storm of cosmic energy erupted from her body in the form of faint blue mist.
|What the hell is that—?!| one of the Vampire Supres shouted, their voice trembling as their senses were overwheld by the sheer force pouring from Daniella’s body.
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