16 // Wound

 

 

I am the true Guardian of Water.

 

Those few words continued to ring in the air as Yumi and the others continued to stare at her in incredulity.

 

*The true Guardian?* she thought. *T-Then what does that make me?*

 

The 'Guardian' narrowed her eyes at Yumi. "And you, you are a false embodiment of me!" She reached forward to grab Yumi's pendant.

 

But as soon as her fingers came in contact with the necklace, the jewel released a small glimmer of blue and repelled the young woman back from touching it.

 

She glanced at her hand in shock before glaring back at Yumi. "What have you done to my pendant?!"

 

"The pendant's mine," she adamantly stated. She summoned up all of her courage and stared back at her with a firm expression. "And you have no right to be a Guardian if you're going to work with those demons and hurt innocent people."

 

The Guardian clenched her jaw and seethed in anger. "You don't know anything!" she spat in a low, dangerous voice. "And don't you even think for a second that you're a Guardian, because you are nothing but an imposter who has stolen my power!"

 

The woman raised her arms at that point and watched as the ice around Yumi silenced her and enclosed around her entire body.

 

"Yumi!" came Chanyeol's voice.

 

"No, stop!" Daehyun yelled.

 

Yongguk saw the desperation of the situation and felt a surge of fury rush through his body. With a low growl, his body combusted into flames and caused ice around him to blow apart. He stepped out of the debris and confronted the woman in his own Guardian transformation. Jongup followed suit and gathered up all of his energy to raise the earth around him with his mind and crushed the barrier encompassing him, creating a bright beam of green light while doing so.

 

He emerged from the icy trap and practically glowed in his first full transformation into the Guardian of Earth. He now wore a slim-fitting outfit like Yongguk's, with the torso area being covered with a sleeveless garment of dark green patterned with lines of different shades of the distinctive colour, and the entire piece of clothing being lined with rims of gold. The bottom half of the garment extended down into three wide strips of material that were spread evenly apart around the body. The sleeves from the layer underneath the vest were a shade of creamy-white that matched the colour of his pants, and narrowed into green metal armlets at the wrist. His hands were covered with dark green fingerless gloves with brass knuckle plates, while a pair of boots of the same colour concealed his feet and were high enough to shield and protect his shins. Finally, a beaded bracelet of a brown colour hung from his left wrist, where one particular bead that was created from a  green jewel was plainly visible and shone brightly.

 

Jongup stepped up next to Yongguk with a solemn expression. The two glowing characters of fire and earth glared in the woman's face and  clearly outnumbered her. It was two Guardians against one.

 

She raised an eyebrow. "You two amateurs cannot possibly be thinking that you would actually stand a chance against me?"

 

Flames erupted out of thin air and enveloped the remaining structures of ice, melting them into their liquid form and burning them until even that form evaporated into the air. The others were now free, and both Daehyun and Chanyeol hurriedly went over to the gasping Yumi who had now crumpled onto her knees.

 

"Can't we?" Yongguk practically challenged.

 

The proclaimed Guardian of Water sneered at them as she instantly generated spears of ice from the air and sent them flying towards the two of them. Yongguk and Jongup easily blocked the attack with walls of fire and earth respectively, before lunging forward from both sides to send their own elements toward the woman.

 

She jumped up with a scowl and created a great wave of water that was impossible to dodge. Yumi quickly got up onto her feet and split the water apart down the middle, creating a pathway towards the other Guardian who just simply smirked.

 

"Oh please."

 

The water instantly re-joined in the middle to reassume the form of a giant wave and approached them rapidly. Daehyun held up his sword from where he was and chanted a spell to generate his powerful lightning, directing it towards the wave. The electric easily conducted through the water and reached the person on the other side. She screamed in pain and dropped the wave, causing it to disappear into thin air.

 

"How dare you!" she screeched as she crouched on the ground, huddling her electrocuted body. She was beginning to flicker in and out of visibility like a faulty hologram. "Don't think you've won yet," she hissed. "You cannot stop something that started over a hundred years ago!"

 

Youngjae's face tensed when he realised what that meant. "Wait… you don't mean to say that you were a Guardian from more than a century ago?!"

 

The woman just smirked.

 

His eyes widened in shock before narrowing into a glare. "So you were the Guardian of Water who first disappeared all those many years ago! That's what started all of this! It was all your doing!"

 

The Guardian slowly stood up on her feet while grimacing from the pain, but the smirk was still on her face. "Don't worry, this will all be over soon. Just as soon as I can…" She shifted her view over to Yumi. "… take back the power that was unjustly taken from me."

 

Yumi stood firmly in her place and did not let her intimidate her. "It doesn't matter whether I'm a fake or not, but you don't deserve to have this power. You're evil."

 

"Don't speak as if you're so high and mighty!" the woman snapped. "You wouldn't even have the privilege of being a fake if it wasn't for that meddling little---"

 

She stopped suddenly when the outline of her body started flickering again, but this time more violently. She was running out of time. The woman fixed her eyes on Yumi.

 

"Even if I can't destroy you with my power…"

 

She pulled out a small, purple-rimmed blade concealed in her clothing.

 

"…then killing you the typical way will easily do the job."

 

Yumi's eyes widened when the Guardian lunged straight for her with the blade in hand. Daehyun blocked her attack with his katana, but was knocked off to the side a second later by a swipe of water.

 

The woman was getting annoyed with the large cluster of people defending Yumi. "Out of my way!" she screamed as she pinned everyone else down with chunks of ice. They would break out of it eventually, but she only needed a moment to take care of Yumi. The latter hastily put up a barrier of ice that turned back to water almost immediately after before splitting apart.

 

"Your powers are no match for mine, the original!" She lifted her blade into the air. "Prepare to die!"

 

Dread went through Yumi's body as she watched the weapon fall closer and closer towards her body, as if in slow motion. But a figure jumped into the way at the last second, and the sound of a blade passing through flesh could be heard.

 

Yumi froze in both fear and shock as she saw the blood fall and stain the ground that they were standing upon.

 

"D… Dae...Daehyun?" she stuttered as she stared at his broad back.

 

The demon-slayer pulled back his katana from where it had pierced through the corrupted Guardian. A whimpering gasp could be heard as she clutched the wound in her abdomen and staggered backwards unsteadily. She started laughing painfully.

 

"Something like this can't kill me if it's not even my real body." She fixed her gaze on Daehyun. "But for you…"

 

She trailed off then while chortling lightly in her injured state, before finally disappearing from sight like a hologram being turned off. The mist lifted, and the group could see that there were no more demons around.

 

An anxious Yumi quickly grasped onto Daehyun. "A-Are you hurt?!"

 

He shook his head. "It's just a small scratch. I'm fine."

 

She frowned and eyed the left arm that he had been keeping concealed from her. "Show me." Yumi grabbed his arm and, to her relief, saw that there was only a small cut on his forearm. Nevertheless, she placed her hand on the wound and managed to generate her own ice to heal it.

 

"Thanks," Daehyun smiled gratefully, but that expression quickly changed to one that was stunned when Yumi suddenly punched his arm a lot harder than he gave her strength credit for. "Ow, what was that for?!"

 

"You idiot!" she cried. "Don't just jump in front of a knife like that!"

 

Daehyun frowned in annoyance. "Hey, who do you think I was doing it for? You're the idiot for just standing there when someone else was about to kill you."

 

"I was shocked, okay?!" Yumi retorted. "I could've always just jumped out of the way at the last second, unlike someone who decided in jump in the way."

 

The rest of the group stared on in astonishment as the two of them disregarded everything else around them and continued bickering.

 

"Well how was I supposed to know how polished your reflexes were?" Daehyun said back. "You could have been seriously hurt!"

 

"Just think about your own wellbeing for once!" she snapped. "Don't you know that other people are worried about you too?!"

 

The demon-slayer stopped when it finally dawned on him as to why she was so upset. She must have thought that he had been stabbed instead of her.

 

Chanyeol stepped forward towards them. "Sorry to interrupt you once again, but I do have a job to finish."

 

Lay quickly ran in front of him and calmly tried to talk him out of it. "No Chanyeol, please. Don't do this, it's not right. You know what the capital plans to do to Yumi."

 

"Who said I was going to take her back to the capital?"

 

Everyone stared at him in confusion as he walked up towards Yumi.

 

"Extracting her powers will not only kill her, but will also make it easier for that so-called true Guardian to retrieve it and complete whatever calamity it is that she's planning."

 

"Then what are you going to do?" Lay asked.

 

Chanyeol fixed his gaze on Yumi. "It will be impossible to convince the capital to let it go, so we'll just have to fake Yumi's death."

 

Yumi stared at him with wide eyes. "But how?"

 

The KangRang soldier turned to his comrade. "By using Lay's hallucination spell."

 

"Spellcasters are actually capable of something like that?" Youngjae wondered. "KangRang really is the spellcasting capital."

 

"Lay is the only known person capable of creating hallucinations," Chanyeol continued. "And only a select few of us know about this ability of his, so we should be able to fool the capital with this as long as Yumi lays low for awhile. Are you up for it Lay?"

 

The other spellcaster nodded.

 

"But how is this going to work?" Daehyun cut in. "There's no way we're going to take Yumi back to the capital even if it is to fake her death."

 

"Of course we won't do that, it's too risky to have her physical presence there," Chanyeol replied. He pulled out a red and orange crystal from his clothing. "Those who work for the capital use these crystals to capture moving images for a short amount of time, which can then be viewed again only once before the crystals disintegrate. We'll just pretend that the hallucination is a captured image of Yumi being killed and taken away by a demon."

 

"Wow, that's amazing!" Jongup marvelled.

 

AeMi shook her head. "No, what's amazing is how you didn't even realise how abnormal it was for you to be able to control the element of earth."

 

The Guardian shrugged. "Some people can use spells, and I can control earth. I didn't see anything wrong with that."

 

Yongguk stared silently at the crystal in Chanyeol's hand. Even if he had lived in KangRang for awhile, there were still a lot of things he didn't know about the nation other than their blood-thirsty demand for his skills as a weaponsmith.

 

Lay went up to Yumi. "I'm going to need a strand of your hair, if that's okay."

 

She nodded and pulled off a strand. "Thanks for helping us."

 

He shook his head. "If we don't help stop what's happening in YoungNan, then the entire land of the Three Terrains may be in danger, seeing as how those demons were able to invade this nation."

 

A few moments later, the two KangRang soldiers had already prepared themselves for their way back to the capital. Chanyeol turned around to look pointedly at Daehyun before he left.

 

"Make sure you don't die before we get back and help you finish whatever it is that has been plaguing YoungNan."

 

Daehyun felt an eye twitch irritably as the KangRang soldier nonchalantly went on his way after saying something so hateful like that to him. *And he'd better make sure that that little trick of his doesn't get found out and put Yumi in danger, or I'll personally come and kick his .*

 

"We'd better make our way back to our village," Youngjae suggested. "We'll be safer behind the barriers Daehyun had set up."

 

Jongup lead the way back to the tunnel that they had infiltrated the nation from. Daehyun trailed behind as an uneasy feeling filled his being. His left arm had been prickling with uncomfortable moments of pain since being wounded by that woman's blade.

 

He pulled up his sleeve and glanced at his forearm. The wound was entirely gone, thanks to Yumi's healing abilities.

 

But when he twisted his arm around to look at the other side, he was shocked to see that a small line of purple was growing at the base of his wrist.

 

 

 

---

D: Uh-oh, what did that woman do to Daehyun?

Welcome new subscribers :)

--- Mistlea