No, that won't work. The problem isn't about mana disruption specifically; it's concentration—

That could work, but what if—

No, no. The mana would dissipate within a stride, maybe less—

A song played, quiet but insistent.

Julia was intensely focused on the issue of defeating the Nashiin. Initially, she'd been looking for a way to eliminate, counter, or at least subvert his Domain, but she quickly realized that the issue wasn't really the Domain itself.

As Lumenfall had said, their abilities were beyond simple manipulations of mana. True, Julia's lightning or magic might stray or lack efficacy due to the interference, but her Truths—and Lumenfall's Revelations—would function regardless of what was happening with the local mana.

Theirs was a will unified with the World. No external interference could separate them.

That said, it certainly affected her body. She was peripherally aware of Lumenfall fighting even now while she was deep in thought. Lumenfall had…some kind of intense instinct to resist the Domain.

It wasn't something she thought about consciously, Julia noticed. It was as though it was baked into her very being—perhaps a dragon's nature is to resist domination?

Regardless, while she was moving and fighting admirably, it was also obvious to Julia that Lumenfall was slower than usual, perhaps a little lethargic, too. It reminded her of when she was sick as a child. She could get up and do chores or train, yet the illness made everything she did slightly less efficient.

A song played, quiet but insistent.

Finding some way to deal with the Nashiin's Domain would only improve their immediate circumstances. It wouldn't lead to his defeat.

The real problem was the crystal.

Julia suddenly felt several of her abilities activate. Though she knew it was just Lumenfall, the experience was still disturbing on a conceptual level. It felt like someone sticking a hand in her back to puppet her body without consent—though Lumenfall had her consent. Still, it wasn't pleasant.

The discomfort threatened to break her concentration, but she quickly adjusted and tossed the sensation to the back of her mind.

The biggest issue was that Julia suspected the Nashiin wasn't lying or exaggerating with his claims of immortality and endlessness. He claimed to need both an anchor and fuel, but what exactly even was an anchor? Would he simply return to being a formless soul floating around the crystal should his anchor be destroyed?

She doubted it.

A song played, quiet but insistent.

Etherium was a 'fragment of Creation.' Surely it could recreate the anchor…she didn't know why she felt so strongly certain about this. Perhaps it was due to her own ability to regenerate?

Wait, was the body—the anchor—just a template? Rather than the body anchoring the Nashiin within this reality, did it simply…define his form? Was that the issue he had when first summoned?

The summoning ritual probably dragged his soul from the Ether, but it couldn't actualize due to—what—not having a form to apply?

She mentally shook her head—the details didn't matter! The point was that she most likely couldn't just destroy the Nashiin's body. That wouldn't actually destroy him; it would just slow him down while his body was reconstructed, probably.

What could she do? There was zero percent chance she could destroy the Etherium itself. She'd managed it before—sort of—but that was in the process of using it.

She doubted the Nashiin would allow her to control the Etherium enough to actually destroy it. Besides, her previous method used on a crystal this large would…well, never mind the city—the entire region would be obliterated.

A song played, quiet but insistent.

Julia's thoughts stalled as she reached an impasse, and the song that had been playing in her subconscious finally grabbed her attention.

If she'd had control of her hands, she probably would've slapped her forehead. The answer was right there! It was constantly hinting to her, but she'd tuned it out this whole time!

A torrent of golden flames seared the already-molten stone, the Nashiin's charred remains burning away completely once again.

The enormous balcony, previously resembling the interior of a cathedral, was unrecognizable. The plain but high-quality stone was scorched and melted, with great droplets of resolidified stone hanging from the ceiling or piled on the floor. Layers of the stone had simply been vaporized by the blast, and the stone remaining underneath had melted.

That said, the Stone was in far better shape than it should have been. The energy released from a punch at relativistic speeds should have vaporized the entirety of the structure, yet the Nashiin's Domain had suppressed the vast majority of the energy, redirecting it into the intervening space between the Stone and the external barrier similarly to how oil quenches a blade fresh from the forge by siphoning the heat away.

Julia was happy to see that Lumenfall hadn't destroyed herself in the attack, even continuing to bathe the Nashiin's ashes in flame to prevent him from reforming. However, she was not unharmed.

She looked much less opaque, her figure more like the ghost of a dragon than the fearsome predator she'd been when Julia had retreated to contemplate.

Lumenfall shifted back into a ferret before wrapping tightly around Julia's torso under the armor.

"You did great. Thanks for stalling," Julia whispered mentally.

"Make it count," Lumenfall replied before falling into a slumber that seemed near-comatose.

The Nashiin took only that brief moment of mental exchange to reform, his bubble once again surrounding him. He gazed at Julia with smug satisfaction, likely noting that she stood with her arms crossed, relaxed rather than defensive.

"Well, you've certainly done a number on my home. Although, proof of a valorous battle will stir the masses. Let's call it a 'necessary sacrifice.' I'm pleased to see that you've come to your senses," he gloated.

"You could say that. I've realized there's no point fighting—you truly are endless. It would simply whittle away my energy until I couldn't fight anymore," Julia replied, unbothered by his patronizing.

"Indeed, and not a moment too soon. You are ready to submit, then?" he asked with obvious greed.

"Ha, no. You might think I'm stupid, but I know what you want from me. You claim to desire an alliance, but what you want is to trade your current anchor for me.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

"You recognize that I'm a spirit, and you wonder what you could achieve with that as your anchor. It seems a common trait for you—desiring others' power.

"I'd even wager you're aware of my relations with the Jadhariin. Perhaps you imagine an opportunity to use my face to gain their trust, and therefore, the Mother more easily?" Julia guessed with an arched brow.

"Curious. You have a great deal figured out, and you claim you won't submit…yet here you stand, not fighting either. Why?" the Nashiin asked in confusion.

"I was just sizing you up," she replied before—vrump!

Julia appeared next to the Etherium crystal in an instant, her hand hovering just above its surface.

"I suspect dealing with you after your connection to the Etherium is severed will be trivial. You claimed to want liberation from it, yes? Allow me to assist," she said with a wicked smile.

"Wha—No!" the Nashiin shouted, launching himself at near-supersonic speed across the room, but it was too late.

Julia's hand rested atop the crystal's surface, her mind already far away.

Julia stood in a vast expanse of white. It was a place she'd been before, yet rather than the overpowering silence of the vast expanse, it was now dominated by the oppressive melody of the Etherium. With it being her conduit into the Ether, she was closer to its will than ever before, and what a strong will it was.

She'd contemplated how she might disentangle the Nashiin from the crystal, but nothing she could think of would work fast enough. Not only was there no possibility of destroying the crystal, the bindings were too complicated to undo—at least in a reasonable amount of time. He certainly wouldn't sit back and let Julia work on it for hours.

The answer came to her in a lilting melody just at the edge of her consciousness. She'd worked constantly to push the call of the Etherium to the back of her mind, so it had never entered her calculations. In retrospect, the answer was obvious, but that is often how hindsight works.

The Etherium itself wanted the Nashiin gone.

However, it was unable to act beyond its purpose, which (apparently) didn't include banishing the Nashiin's connection. When she thought about it, the situation was quite sad. It was an all-powerful force of creation, yet it was unable to do anything besides, even if something—someone—stood in its way.

However, if Julia simply provided her own will, the Etherium would help her—help itself.

Suddenly, a dark cloud of malevolence materialized a few strides from her. It formed a tight vortex of purple wrath before solidifying into the shape she'd first spied the Nashiin in: a robe of a purple so dark, it was almost black. The robe draped and covered every part of its body, and the dark hood seemed completely empty, save for a pair of glowing purple eyes.

Though its face wasn't visible, Julia could almost feel the scowl it wore as it studied her.

"I am unsure whether to call you clever or foolish, girl. You have entered my realm—the place where my power is greatest. You had no hope of defeating me out there, yet you think things will be different here?" he gloated, his figure rising up, nearly doubling in size.

Julia chuckled.

"A cornered animal that knows its end is near does usually attempt a show of intimidation," she stated casually.

The figure, though his tone didn't change, became irate. His robe flared and fluttered with purple flames, as if it had suddenly ignited. A great purple energy surged up to surround him, flaring skulls and bones and other horrible imagery within its rampant whirlwind.

"Ignorant girl—but you were correct: I want your body, not you. It would not bother me to kill you first," he said, lifting a shadowed hand and sending a torrent of purple flames along its length toward her.

The flames were like death reaching its alabaster hand out, and Julia nearly flinched just from the feel of them. Even so, her ally's strength inspired unshakable confidence.

The Etherium's call became a deafening ring, like the clang of a city's emergency warning bell. Julia became aware of ethereal threads—or what felt like threads—connecting her to infinitesimally small points around the Ether, yet these points contained multitudes. Oceans of information came rushing through her head—far too much to process.

However, hers was not to process; she was merely the conduit.

A gout of golden, white, and electric blue energy emerged from Julia, as if pouring from her very soul. It met the purple death and negated it fully, not a single trace remaining of either energy source.

The Nashiin raged, launching a myriad attacks of purple skulls, black chains of despair, and green, wailing souls. The energy that emerged from Julia countered each perfectly, not a single drop wasted.

Right, the Etherium will handle defense through me, but I need to direct it offensively.

Julia scanned the space, trying to locate the Nashiin's tether. It was difficult—there was a titanic amount of information stored within every single point of light, and there was so much light that the entire space looked uniformly white. How could she possibly sift through it all?

A memory from her childhood bubbled to the surface of her mind unbidden:

"The key to this ritual is to connect with the mana outside your body, and then trace it to its source. We talked about this before, but the source of all mana is the sun. We don't need to complicate things with additional information right now, so don't think too hard about the implications of that. Just know that what you're looking for right now can be found through the sun."

She could be imagining it, but Julia could swear she could feel a…connection—a thread—of some kind, from the mana to the sun. She felt she intuitively knew the sun's position in the sky despite being underground—or perhaps it was just Braden's words affecting her mind.

Regardless, she focused on that connection, whether real or not, and began pumping her mana out through her finger and into the sapphire dust.

The Ether rattled and groaned with bangs and booms and cracks as attacks met and destroyed each other.

During her ritual to summon Trixy, she'd felt an intangible connection to the sun—to the Ether. It was like a thread connected to her body and running all the way up to and through the sky. She understood now that a summoning was essentially connecting to one of these points of light within the Ether and drawing information—a memory—from it.

But did those connections ever fully disappear?

As the thought occurred to her, a blazing lance of light suddenly manifested in front of her. It was thick like the rope attached to ship anchors and shot off into the white expanse a ways before splitting into a myriad smaller ropes. Julia only studied it for a second before the answer came to her.

Lumenfall.

This was Lumenfall's connection to the Ether. It was likely different from how it had been when she was just a ferret. Those divergent paths and splits must be her connections to different dragons—different ancestors. Is that what Lumenfall had meant? She had ancestral memories not just from ancestor dragons of this world, but all worlds?

A deafening whump rang out as two attacks blasted themselves from existence, though not as cleanly as others. Great globules of energy glowing gold and purple flew off to Julia's sides, as though someone had tossed an enormous cup of water at her.

Irrelevant. Focus!

She could visualize connections with the Ether—that was good progress. But how would she find the Nashiin's connection? She had a deep and personal bond with Lumenfall, so visualization was easy—natural, almost.

The Etherium's song suddenly became insistent, as if it were attempting to get Julia's attention.

In front of her, energies clashed. The Nashiin appeared to be growing frustrated, his every move countered perfectly and equally. Though his face was still hidden, his frantic mannerisms and attacks, which seemed less like the flow of a battle and more like him going down a list of every attack he knew, indicated his struggle.

Things seemed contained for the moment. What did the Etherium want? If it was just trying to rush her—

The song suddenly intensified, all but confirming that it was responding to her specifically. It seemed to reach out with hands of melody and grab her face, angling toward a small thread connecting them.

Julia blinked as the sensation faded—was that an illusion? She felt as if she'd just had a guided daydream—actually, that was not even close to the strangest thing happening this very moment.

She understood the message, of course. She was connected to the Etherium right now in an intimate way, and the Nashiin was also connected to it. She looked inward toward that thin, almost unnoticeable thread and followed it along its length.

Unsurprisingly, it led here: the Ether. However, it did not stop at one of those infinitely small points of light. Rather, it split in two. One strand went off toward one of the myriad realities stored within the Ether's memory, and the other…

That went straight to the Nashiin.

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