The trees moved with surprising speed and attacked with astonishing strength. They were more agile now that the boar seal had given them life than when it was Camus.
"Asuren! Concentrate!" she yelled after deflecting a blow that made her arms tremble. "I can take care of these trees. Focus on the boar seal!"
Asuren was still worried but, at least, he stopped glancing away from his opponent.
Thea cut the tree in half, and as she had expected, it regenerated with remarkable speed. She willed her wind daggers to vanish and resorted back to using wind gusts. She trapped them and tried to shatter one into tiny pieces but she only managed to break it in four. It did regenerate but it took a bit longer than the last time.
Thea had to do better to slow down the regeneration of the withered trees and help Asuren in exhausting the boar seal. She tried again and managed to cut her opponent into eight. She kept trying until she managed to slice the tree into a few more pieces. A few more tries and she would eventually get the result she wanted.
^##########^
Fueled by rage, the attacks of the boar seal became even more powerful. Every time Asuren deflected an attack, he would be thrown a few feet away. Even the crimson blade became harder to shatter. Asuren had to perform three powerful whirlwind slashes to break it. After that, he was too tired to perform a counterattack and before he could gather enough strength to slash his wind blades, the boar seal had already manifested a new weapon and would parry his wind daggers.
"I feel hesitation in your slashes," the boar seal smirked after blocking an attack. "Are you scared to kill me? Because if you do, you will also kill yourself?" he waved his crimson blade and pushed Asuren away from him. "The funny thing here is, even if we both give our best in this battle, we cannot kill each other. And even when you back out of your deal with my foolish disciple, I don't think you will die."
"Why?" Asuren curiously asked. Did the boar seal know the reason he could not die?
"Stop pretending that you don't know anything, Nightgloom Puppet!" the boar seal relentlessly attacked.
Asuren dodged and deflected the crimson blade until he could toss the blade out of the hands of his opponent, "Tell me!" he attacked the boar seal with eagerness. "I want to know the reason why the Evil Witch fails to kill me every time!" he cornered the boar seal against a tree and pointed the wind daggers in its neck. "Tell me the reason I can't die!"
"You can't die…" the boar seal laughed and summoned a crimson dagger. "But you can suffer…"he raised his hand to cut his own neck. Asuren quickly let go of his wind daggers and seized the crimson blade with his bare hands.
"Are you crazy?" Asuren shattered the crimson dagger with wind gusts and tried to knock the boar seal unconscious but crimson vines had covered his entire body and immobilized him with poisonous thorns.
"I don't trust you," the boar seal hurled him on an adjacent tree and tied him there. "I would rather die and destroy the seal within me rather than surrender it to the Evil Witch!"he summoned another crimson dagger and pointed it at his own chest. "You will not obtain the power of my seal!"
Asuren, with the help of the rage rising from the depths of his body, had finally managed to move his hands, summon wind blades, and perform a powerful whirlwind slash that freed him from the crimson vines. He quickly grabbed the crimson blade, shattered it, and then hurled the boar seal to the ground.
"I don't want the power of the seal!" Asuren knelt over the boar seal. He was dizzy from the poison injected by the thorns into his body. It was thanks to that strange yet familiar rage that he could stay awake. "You don't have to give me the seal. You can hand it over my friends. They can destroy it without killing you. Please… allow them to destroy your seal. Let's free the Fairy Realm from the Eternity Curse. I… I promise… I promise to kill the Evil Witch. Just please… give me…" Asuren almost fell unconscious when a flaming axe had hit the back of his left shoulder.
"General Kali! No!" Thea shattered all the attacking withered trees into dusts and, gratefully, none of them had regenerated. She hurried in front of the tall and muscular fairy.
"What is your friend doing?" General Kali glanced at Asuren with suspicion. "He could destroy the seal now. Why is he talking to him? Does he want to take it? Is General Andres telling the truth? This fairy cannot be trusted?"
"Henry found a solution to destroy the seals without killing their keepers," Thea explained to the general. "Please, give us a little more time."
"We need… to leave…" Asuren pulled the exhausted boar seal up on its feet to escape from another threat but, before he could spread his wings, he sensed a frosty chain approaching the heart of the boar seal. He tried to perform a whirlwind slash but the power left within him was not enough to stop the speeding weapon. It broke through the whirlwind and pierced his heart.
"Sel! Stop!" Calix had arrived to stop her from piercing the boar seal that Asuren was protecting with his own life. "You will kill Asuren!"
"You are buying time to save that evil fairy when you did not give any to Greyleaf?! You just killed that young fairy!" Sel waved her frosty chain, but it had been deflected by Riz.
"Help Asuren," Riz said and tried to push Sel away from Asuren and the boar seal. "Take them as far away as you can!"
"You will not go anywhere!!!" Sel slipped away from Riz but had been blocked by Calix. She was too furious to be stopped by Riz alone.
Asuren, despite the pain in his chest and his failing senses had carried the boar seal in his arms. He spread his wings and soared as far away as he could but his remaining energy only lasted for a few seconds. He fainted and plummeted fast to the ground. Ayhan caught the boar seal while Thea grabbed his arm and quickly placed him on her back. She and Ayhan soared out of Emeral Wind Forest and hid at the depths of Yellow Oak Forest.
"Gia, Henry, and Juliann will be here soon," Thea carefully put Asuren on the ground and tried to stop his chest wound from bleeding while Ayhan watched over the boar seal. He was unharmed but he looked exhausted. His eyes were half-open and his breathing was faint.
"What happened?" Gia landed right next to Thea. Juliann was behind her, carrying Henry at his back. "This is…" she glanced at the bleeding wound with disbelief. "Sel did this?"
"She never misses when she's angry," Thea sighed.
"Where is she?" Gia asked after mending the chest wound of Asuren. She was now tending on his shoulder wound. "This one… is from General Kali's axe… Fortunately for us, he didn't use a cursed weapon. Asuren will be fine. He only needs to rest."
"Riz and Calix are trying to calm her down," Thea was still worried despite what Gia had said. Asuren looked frighteningly pale.
"I think you need to go and help Riz," Gia advised after leaning on a tree. She looked exhausted. Henry and Juliann too. "Sel can be annoyingly stubborn at times."
"But you all look tired. I need to stay here and protect you."
"We practiced the seal extraction a couple of times," Gia weakly smiled. "We only need a few minutes of rest. Don't worry about us. Ayhan is here with us," Gia weakly smiled. "He can protect us."
"The boar seal…"
"I will not go anywhere. I will not try to kill myself either," the boar seal blinked and slowly sat up. "But I need to check on something," he placed a hand on the forehead of Asuren and closed his eyes. "I need to see his memories."
^############^