The Gaps in F r i e n d s h i p

by Arcanum -Phantasy


Ch.32 Lily Petals and Phoenix Feathers

Hearths Warming stared blankly at her computer, fingers lightly tapping across the keys as she worked. On the surface, she was the picture of calm professionalism as she cataloged her cases. In truth, she was a tower of nerves. It had been days since Lily tried to kill Sunset Shimmer and her friends. Days in which the Wraith seemed to have lessened her attempts to feed off of the students of Canterlot High School instead of increasing her efforts. She knew that the school had some kind of connection to her homeland, perhaps a portal or wild gab of some kind that made the simple place of learning a beacon of magic for those that were strong enough to sense it.
That included the Wraiths that roamed the world. Since the day she came to this world, she had made it her life's mission to rid Terra of the vile monsters. For the most part, she had done well in regards to that mission, but out of all of the Wraiths she faced, Lily was the one that gave her the most trouble. As a whole, Wraiths came in two forms, Regulars and Archwraiths. While Regulars were rather easy to kill, Archwraiths were a different kind of beast all together. They were smart, cruel, and very powerful. Some of them even developed titles among their kind the more formidable they became. Lily of the Velvet Tongue was a name that made even the most capable human mages tremble in fear, regardless of what powers they had to bear.
She stopped her typing and leaned back in her seat as she thought back to the first time she crossed paths with the infamous monster, the memory clear as day even after all these years.


***


Clanging metal and battle cries filled the air as two warriors clashed, one a woman born from the coldest darkness while the other stood against her with a blade in each hand and a burning flame behind her emerald eyes. An empty black sky watched the two women fight to the death in a field of glowing violet flowers. Lily smiled confidently as she blocked her opponent's sword with her spear, the weapon the same shade of black as her ball gown. Hearths Warming glared daggers at her enemy, her dual swords reflecting the light from her glowing golden plate-mail like polished glass.
"Tell me, do you really think you can win?" Lilly smiled, face inched a little past the the cross to their weapons. "Many have come for my head. None of them have succeeded. What makes you so special?"
Hearths Warming let out a furious snarl as she swung her free blade at the Wraith. The monster in human form didn't react as the sword cleaved the top half of her head off just below her nose. Black blood poured out of the open wound as it slid off of her body and hit the ground with a wet splat. The smile on Lily's lips turned into a bored frown as she leaned what was left of her head back.
"Not much for talking? How droll."
As she said that, her blood changed into thick vine-like tendrils as it picked up the removed part of her body. She continued to talk as the tentacles and the body part merged with the formerly bloody stump above her mouth line.
"You can't kill me, so you could at least make your death a bit more memorable. Come now. Tell me about yourself. What makes you so sure you won't be just another soul in my stomach?"
Hearths Warming's glare melted into an unreadable mask as she jumped back, keeping a ten foot gap between her and her enemy. For the past five hours the two had clashed, her blades tearing into her countless times and the demon continued to regenerate each time. All the while, Lily's mocking smile never left her face, no matter how many times her opponent cut it off of her head. The beast was toying with her, testing the limits of her prey the same way a cat did when it met a new type of rodent before it decided how to kill it. Heaths Warming was aware of this of course, but that was only because she was doing the same in her own way.
She pointed a sword at her regenerating opponent and said, "Come and you will see."
Lily sighed as she pointed her free hand out towards her opponent.
"Humans. Such cliché creatures."
A beam of black energy shot out of her hand towards Hearths Warming, but at the last second a tower shield appeared between the attack and its target. The Wraith's eyebrows raised at that while a cocky smile could be seen on Hearth Warming's face as the now dented shield fell over before she re-closed the gap between them. At first, Lily was going to let the human take a swing at her directly like she had previously, but changed her mind at the last second and blocked with her spear. This proved to be a wise decision.
The second the blades made contact with her spear's shaft, a large explosion sent her flying ten feet back. Hearths Warming pressed her advantage, a battle cry sharing space with loud explosions each time her magically charged swords slammed into Lily's spear. After the first blast, Lily was able to better brace herself against Hearth Warming's attacks, but she still struggled against the wild spree of attacks flying at her. Lily let out a savage snarl as she side stepped out of Hearths' barrage and tried to side-swipe her with her spear.
Hearths Warming smiled as she summoned a gap where Lily stood before and charged through it just before the Wraith's weapon made contact. A second later, Lily let out an agonized roar as her enemy warped into existence behind her and her sword blasted her back. A beam of black energy shot out of the slowly healing open wound in the Wraith's back. The Gap Walker quickly side-stepped through another gap just in time to avoid the incoming attack and cleaved the monster's head off as she stepped out of another. The Wraith caught her head before it hit the ground and slammed it back into place before a wave of dark energy shot out of her body like a dark tornado. Hearths Warming dove through a gap at the last second, making sure the opening point would be a good distance away from the raging monster. She came out of the portal rolling to her feet as she hit the ground and assumed a combat stance.
Dark energy flared out of Lily's body like a toxic maelstrom as the Wraith turned towards her, wounds healed and gold eyes glowing with hate as she growled at her.
"Pesky nat," she snarled. "Fine. No more games."
"Funny," Hearths Warming smirked. "I was thinking the same thing."
The dark energy thickened as it swirled around her, her golden eyes the only thing visible from the heart of the inky black tornado. A wild feral shriek filled the air as the energy was blown away, revealing a new horror to the world and her opponent. Her hair had turned into writhing black tentacles that dripped with thick oily slime, her hands had changed into savage bird-like talons that gripped her spear like saber-lined vices, and small ring-shaped mouths lined with razor sharp teeth dotted what parts of her body her dress didn't cover. Lily's gold eyes glowed with hate as she glared at Hearths Warming, her mouth twisted into a feral snarl that showed her fangs.
The real fight had begun.
Lily let out a hateful shriek as beams of darkness fired out of the mouths on her body. Hearths Warming dropped one of her swords, reached into a gap, and pulled out a kite shield just in time to intercept the attack. The force of the beam was enough to knock her back five feet before she regained enough traction to hold back the continuous stream of darkness. She grit her teeth as she felt her defense start to melt under the strain before she poured some of her magic into it. The silver shield shined gold as its damage vanished and the darkness scattered off of it like rain to an umbrella. Lily noticed, a feral snarl her only reaction as she canceled her attack. With speed well beyond that of any mortal, the Wraith seemingly appeared in front of her human enemy. The beast's claws tore into her shield like wet toilet paper, eager to get to the armored human hiding behind with the determination of a demon. Hearths Warming abandoned the shield and reached into another gap. Lily grinned wickedly as she reached out with her free claw for the woman's throat, only to scream in agony as a spiked iron club was brought down on the offending limb. Lily's hair grew and lashed out at her, but a well timed gap walk saved her from a gristly fate at their designs. Hearths Warming didn't have long to enjoy her escape when she appeared ten feet behind the horror, as the beast quickly turned to face her and spikes of dark energy burst out of the ground towards her. She jumped clear only to seconds later get grabbed by her opponent's taloned hand, the arm it was attached to now as long as an oak is tall. The monster grinned wickedly as she leveled her spear at the armored woman, her limb quickly returning to its original length. Her iron club glowed a brilliant gold as magic poured into it and with a bellowing cry she brought the weapon down on the gripping talon just inches away from the spears tip. Lily screamed in rage-fueled agony as her broken limb released the woman only to take a stab at her with her spear a second later. She quickly parried the spear with her sword and slammed the magically charged club into Lily's head. Black mist pored out of the wound as the Wraith's hair lashed out at her, the monster seemingly unaware of the fact that half of her head was nothing but a crater. Hearths Warming slashed away at the tendrils as she attempted to gain some distance from the beast they were attached to.
"What are you?" Lily hissed, her head slowly popping back into shape as she glared at Hearths Warming.
Hearths Warming leveled her blade at the Wraith and in a tone far older than any human could ever hope to claim said, "I am the flame that brought unity to a waring people. The wings of those who death cannot claim through time. I am Hearths Warming; The First Phoenix and The Flame of Unity. And the one who will strike you down."
As she said that hundreds of gaps opened around her, each with the handle of some kind of weapon sticking out of it, waiting to be drawn. Lily let out an inhuman roar, rage mixing with wounded pride as she charged towards the woman. She thought she could kill her? She thinks she has that kind of power? No. This woman was nothing but a mere mortal. She was Lily of the Velvet Tongue. She could never die! SHE WAS IMMORTAL!
She swung her spear at the armored woman, only to yelp in surprise as a surge of power forced her back. Her eyes widened as the woman changed in front of her. Golden, fiery wings exploded out of her back, filling the dark world around them with light for the first time like a pair of feathery suns. The gaps reacted to their master's sudden surge of power as they went from nearly colorless to solid gold shimmers.
Lily glared at the angel. Heaths Warming glared at the beast. A tense silence filled the air as the two forces stared at their opposites. And then, they clashed.
Golden sword met obsidian spear as the two beings brought everything they had to bear, neither unwilling to rid the world of the other. Black beams tore into the ground, golden blades slashed off limbs, and blood was spilled as the two warriors fought. Seeing the futility of blindly attacking, Lily summoned a wall of darkness to weaken her opponent's momentum only to see it destroyed a moment later by a golden war hammer. Hearths Warming then followed up with a magically charged crossbow and fired golden bolts of power at the Wraith. In response, Lily filled her spear with dark energy and deflected the bolts with a twirl of her weapon. As the bolts exploded into the ground the Wraith slashed at Hearths Warming's face with her free claw. She tilted her head away from the attack, dropped her hammer as she reached into a nearby gap and in one fluid motion cut into the limb with a glowing dagger. The Wraith let out a snarling curse as she jumped back from the shining angel .
"DAMN YOU!!!" she roared and held a claw up above her head.
Beams of darkness fell like rain as the Wraith extended the reach of her power into her home dimension. Hearths Warming expected this and filled her armor with as much magic as she could spare, but she knew that she couldn't keep this going for much longer. Her magic was starting to run low and maintaining so many gaps at once was taking a heavy toll on her. She needed to end this soon.
She didn't have long to plan. As the beams of shadow rained across the land, shadowy figures slowly rose out of the flower-covered ground.
"Hiding behind minions now? Pathetic," Hearths Warming spat. "Have you no shame?"
Lily laughed, then said, "Minions? What minions?"
As she said that, the shadows turned into mist and flowed into the countless mouths covering the Wraith's upper body. Hearths Warming threw her knife at the feeding Wraith only for it to be destroyed by a dark beam before it could make contact. Lily grinned before she charged at her, spear glowing with the same black misty energy that she was eating as she tried to stab her with it. She dodged the attack, but failed to notice the claw coming towards her until the Wraith had her by the neck.
"Caught you," the Wraith purred. "Last words?"
"Just two," she growled. "Frost! Come!"
Lily had just enough time to look confused before an echoing neigh filled the air and something slammed into her side from a nearby gap. Hearts Warming coughed from where she fell as air returned to her lungs as her familiar did battle with the Wraith. She wasted no time as she gathered as many weapons a she could, meanwhile Lily fired beams at the Windigo as it froze the ground and demon with its presence.
"Damn beast!" Lily roared, shattering the ice creeping onto her arms with a flex. "I'll turn you into venison!"
"You may try demon," Frost intoned, dodging a burst of darkness as he summoned a freezing fog from his hooves.
The Wraith snarled as she summoned dark spikes out of the ground. Frost countered with spikes of ice, filling the air with a sound like shattering glass as the two attacks clashed. Lily pointed a claw at the Windigo and a beam of dark energy dropped down on him from the sky. Frost dodged the attack before he launched a ball of ice the size of a baseball at her.
Lily punched the offending object before firing a barrage of dark rays from her mouths. Frost summoned a wall of ice just in time to avoid the attack, but it failed to hold back all but the worst of the attack as it exploded. Frost let out a pained shout as he fell back from the shock. As he laid stunned on his side, Lily moved towards him with the slow cruelty of a cat that found a wounded bird. A cold grin grew on her face as she raised her spear, ready to land the killing blow before a glowing object blasted into her side. She let out an agonized wail as the top half of her body flew twenty feet away from the rest of her.
"Wh-What in the world?" she hissed as she pushed herself up onto her elbows.
Hearth Warming stood thirty feet away from her, a bold smile spread across her face as she pointed a palm at the severed Wraith. That took a backseat to the spectacle that surrounded the woman. All around her shined pillars of light, each formed from a different magically charged weapon falling infinitely between two gaps. Hearths Warming said nothing as she summoned a gap above the injured wraith. She didn't have time to even blink before her world was consumed by explosions as the gap walker dumped a whole wear house of unstable magically charged weapons on top of her. At the same time a gap was opened to save Frost from the wave of destruction.
When the literal dust settled, all that was left that Lily even existed was a massive city-sized crater in the ground. Hearths Warming fell to her knees, the glow from her armor and her wings gone with the last of her magic as exhaustion claimed her. Never before had she needed to resort to a theoretic gamble to win a battle, but that didn't mean that she was upset with the results. She panted as she stared at the massive display of power and smiled in relief. Nothing could survive that. Even a being with Lily's regenerative talents couldn't come back from nothing. She chuckled as she staggered to her feet.
"It's done," she gasped.
"Indeed."
Hearths Warming let out a gasp as something burst through her back and out her chest. A trickle of blood seeped past her lips as she shakily looked over her shoulder. A malformed humanoid shape stood behind her, its skeletal arm reaching through her like a gristly reaper as its golden eyes bore into her. Strangled gasps were all the warrior could manage as she struggled to understand what she was seeing.
"Now die," she whispered.
A wet ripping filled the air as Hearths Warming was torn apart, the poor woman too weak to even scream as her life was taken away.


***


The Therapist grimaced as her hand drifted towards the area Lily's claw exited in her chest, the pain still fresh in her memories even after all this time. Like all of her kind, death was never a permanent thing for her. But unlike her children, Hearths Warming's resurrections were more akin to reincarnation. At the moment of death, she would be reborn in a new body at the moment of another's birth. No matter who her parents were, she would always be born with the same colors and her new parents would always give her the same name. She lived countless lives even before her death at the hands of the Archwraith, but the one thing that she never got used to was how she kept her memories from each of her lives. An old soul like her's would always clash with the way things changed, never able to act on her skills until her body caught up with her. Another inconvenience her condition gave her was the inability to strengthen her abilities until she reexperienced puberty, while Lily could continue to add to her own power over time. The end result was a constant game of chase with the Gap Walker constantly having to double her efforts to close the distance of power between them.
Not helping was how Wraiths reproduced.
In addition to making cores, when a Wraith killed someone the leftover fragments of their soul turned into a Regular, but if a person with a large amount of magic was killed or took their own life thanks to a Wraith's influence their magic merges with the damage to their soul and they become an Archwraith. Thanks to her job, it was rather easy for her to find Wraith nests and deal with them when she could. It also helped her prevent other Archwraiths from being born. With all of the magic focused in the city, it was a miracle that no new ones had appeared. Especially when she saw how close Sunset Shimmer came to such a horrible fate. A being with her kind of power would've been a truly terrifying Archwraith, even when compared to the kind of monster Lily was.
While she was glad that the monster hadn't killed anyone recently, it also put her on edge for a different reason. When Wraiths of any power level are denied food for too long they can enter a state of wild desperation that is often worse then their usual manipulative tactics. A feral Wraith might be easier to find, but that is only because a bloodbath is fairly hard to miss.The long gaps in suicides was a bittersweet thing for Hearths Warming, but she knew that the peace wouldn't last. Not helping was the fact that she felt her magic was starting to fray. While she was still fairly powerful, it was only just short of what it was in her previous life while Lily only continued to get stronger.
As she sat in her chair staring at the ceiling, a thought formed in her head that she seldom mulled over in the past.
Perhaps...its time to find an apprentice.


***


Lily frantically paced in front of her throne, the normal wails of her domain silent as the Wraith muttered to herself.
"Foolish! Stupid! How could I do something so pathetic?!" she snarled, stomping a foot into the solid void beneath her.
The growling in her stomach seemed to answer her as a sudden spell of weakness forced her to her knees. She let out a frustrated roar as she slammed a fist into the solid void. She needed to feed. She could feel her mind fading as her feral urges started to take hold. She clenched her jaw as she struggled to find a way to retain her sanity, but she kept hitting walls. Hearths Warming was emaciating her seeds and Sunset's group were protected by a field of magic that she barely knew how to bypass. As it stood, she could only see one way to drag her prey far enough into despair to make a proper meal out of them. If she could get the girls to kill their siblings, then they should ripen long before her mind fell to her more primal instincts. It wouldn't be too much of an issue to her. It wasn't the first time she made a family member kill a child, but these three children made her hesitate. In a lot of ways, she felt a kind of draw to them. The way they turned a happy and peaceful school into a hotbed of despair was a work of true art worthy of celebration in her eyes. It would be such a shame to kill them. Such a dark and twisted set of souls needed to be nurtured. If allowed to grow, they could turn into something truly wonderful.
A sudden pulse in her gut made her flinch, eyes wide as she slowly stared down at herself.
"It couldn't be," she gasped. "I-I don't have the energy to make one."
Another pulse ran through her stomach, much stronger than the last as a pained yelp flew past her lips. It happened again and again, each time getting stronger and filling her with a familiar sense of nausia. A sensation like being kicked in the stomach was the only thing she was aware of before she felt herself start to vomit. She let out an agonized wail as she covered her mouth with her hands, gray slime oozing past her fingers as she fell to her side. She laid in silence for what felt like hours as she waited for her body to recover, ragged gasps the only sound echoing throughout the void. Slowly, she brought her hands away from her face and what she saw brought a soft smile to her face. Three diamond-shaped violet gems sat in her filth stained palm, each about the size of a large marble and glowing with a faint light. Tears slid down her face as she held the gems close to her chest.
"Shush, shush," she cooed. "Mommy's here."