Itinit looked at the beam of blue light and wondered what to do with it, but then noticed a higher priority threat: a purple "eye" that separated from the slot.
Itinit had no doubt that this "eye" would explode, so he fired an energy ball with a clot of purple energy inside towards it. But the "eye" dodged the ball and headed straight for the enemy.
Itinit swiped his finger through the air and summoned an energy barrier, which then formed into a sphere. A beam of blue energy hit it and stopped. The purple "eye" also reached the wall of the barrier and stopped moving. Itinite''s ball with the clot of energy turned around and flew towards Myuryuri.
A pink "eye" activated in one of the cells, accompanied by a bright glow. The energy circle that connected all the cells changed color to pink for a moment. Three blue “eyes” appeared in the empty cells, which almost instantly charged and released rays of energy from their pupils. Two of them missed, but the third was the thickest and hit the enemy''s ball.
An explosion occurred near the circle with the "eyes". The blue "eye" that hit the target was itself destroyed. In response, the pink "eye" was activated again.
The destroyed blue "eye" reappeared in its original place. Meanwhile, two "eyes": purple and blue, resisted the enemy''s barrier and quite successfully. Soon its walls began to flicker, after which it disappeared under the pressure of a blue beam and an explosion of the purple "eye", which left behind a small vortex with the remains of energy.
Itinit was thrown towards the smoking remains of a wooden building that had recently burned down from his character''s fire. The guy managed to stay on his feet, but noticed that an energy beam from the blue "eye" was approaching him, followed by reinforcements.
Itinit''s position became dangerous. Three beams were flying at him at once, cutting the ground in their path.
“Why did the spirit of mushrooms create it?” Itinit thought. "Did this creature really appear in her brain and then be extracted from there?"
Itinit covered himself in a blue aura that enhanced his energy abilities, and then jumped back. A large ball of energy appeared in his hand with a clot of gray smoke inside.
"If these are eyes, then I need to deprive them of the ability to see," Itinit thought. “But it will be strange if Myuryuri does not bypass this restriction.”
The pink "eye" activated again and restored the purple "eye" in the cell. Then the blue-green "eye" activated and colored the energy circle blue-green.
"The pink "eye" restores damage, and the blue-green one replenishes energy. The yellow one should remove negative effects."
The beams of blue energy were approaching. Itinit threw a ball with a clot of smoke towards them, and it was almost instantly destroyed. An additional cloud from the ball was added to the smoke that was emitted from the remains of the burnt house.
What Itinit had predicted happened. In the thick smoke screen, the blue "eyes" stopped "seeing" the enemy and stopped attacking with beams from their "pupils".
"Now I have only one chance. I need to destroy the pink ''eye'' so that it can''t restore the others."
Itinit accumulated energy in his hand and created a large blue ball with a clot of purple energy inside using his aura.
"If only I could hit it".
Itinit released the ball with trembling fingers.
The guy''s heart stopped for a moment. He took a mask from his inventory to avoid breathing in the smoke and looked closely at the gray cloud, although he saw nothing in it...
… There was an explosion that cleared the air a little. A pink light appeared in the courtyard, and then a pink semicircle.
"I missed," Itinit decided. "It was naive to hope for that. But I tried. Now I can only accept my fate."
In fact, the attack was not a failure. The pink light was a healing "eye" that restored the lower, destroyed part of the energy circle along with the blue "eyes".
Suddenly, Itinit saw a blue-green light that belonged to the eye that restored energy, and realized that he had given up so early in vain:
"I need to attack it while he is restoring his strength. I still have a chance, but it is the very last one."
On the shore of the lake, the confrontation between the united fire dog girl and the doll sisters continued. Noruluya released several fireballs from her aura at her opponents, but all of them were blocked by their shields.
"I''ll have to go straight at them," the dog girl looked at her claws, engulfed in flames. “Noru, Kimchan, I don’t want to burn these stupid little sisters.”
While Noruluya was thinking, the dolls went on the attack. Suturu summoned a purple energy circle, which began to spin and released energy darts. Aibi slammed her axe into the ground in front of her, causing a green acid pool to form, which released several acid bubbles.
Noruluya dodged the darts and then took the form of a comet and circled around the dolls from the side. The energy circle, along with Suturu''s hand, moved after the enemy, but did not have time to aim. Things were no better with Aibi''s skills. The acid bubbles moved too slowly, so they stopped pursuing the dog girl and hung in the air.
Noruluya tried to attack the enemies from behind, but stopped near a ditch of acid that suddenly appeared around the dolls. At the moment of the dog girl''s movement, Aibi swung her axe around herself and her sister, causing the acid pool to expand.
Suturu aimed an energy circle at the enemy, fired darts, but missed. Noruluya disappeared and left behind a flash of fire.
“Aibi, you’re not stupid,” Suturu looked at her sister. “I didn’t think you could stop someone on fire from approaching us.”
“You’re not stupid either, Suturu,” Aibi answered. “You were able to blow up someone who was burning.”
Suturu looked up and saw a flash of fire, from which Noruluya appeared in a fiery aura.
“Someone who was burning didn’t explode,” Suturu pointed upward. "Someone burning just disappeared."
Noruluya stayed in the air for a few moments, and then made a rapid jump upside down.
The dolls were scattered in pieces in opposite directions. The acid and the energy circle disappeared - there was no one to support them anymore.
Noruluya was on all fours, breathing heavily and looking at the burning hair of one of the dolls.
"What have I done?" the dog girl looked around and thought. “I destroyed these doll sisters. Forgive me, Noru, Kimchan. I can no longer be with you."Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
Noruluya looked up at the sky, exhaled deeply, and closed her eyes. The fire beneath the dog girl''s feet flared brightly, and then lifted her into the air. There, high above the island, she split into two comets that began to fall to the ground...
…Kimchan and Noru stood opposite each other with their mouths open and tongues hanging out, surrounded by fiery auras. Tears were simultaneously flowing from their eyes and then evaporating.
“Sistel...” Noru said.
“Sistel…” Kimchan repeated.
The dog girls ran at each other, and when they met, their fingers intertwined. Their long tongues still hung out of their mouths, making it difficult to talk. But this did not bother the sisters. They understood each other without words. The fire on their bodies gradually died down.
Noru and Kimchan stood on the shore of the lake and did not notice how the sun disappeared behind the slope of the crater and now emitted an orange glow from there. The sisters did not care, because now they were finally together.
“It’s a pity that we don’t have another sister with us,” Noru finally stuck her tongue in her mouth and was able to talk.
“She will always be with us as long as we are together,” Kimchan followed the example of her “older sister.”
“Sorry, Noruluya,” the dog girls thought at the same time and looked at the sky.
***
Halankuo looked at the doll''s lifeless face and couldn''t understand anything for a long time. Finally, some impulse in her brain pulled the girl out of her stupor.
“Who are you?” Halankuo asked.
“Your little sister, Sitihi,” the doll answered.
"Let me talk to her," the older sister''s voice said.
Halankuo felt her consciousness separate from her body, but not completely. She saw a doll in front of her with a head in her hand, a blue glow coming from its eyes and open mouth, she heard speech, but she could not understand it. The girl realized that she had changed places with her mother.
A few moments later, Halankuo rose from the coffin and followed the doll somewhere. Her body did not obey her, and the girl felt like a spectator in a first-person game.
Sitihi stopped at the opposite end of the dungeon, near a large stone door, and said something.
"We''re going in now," Halankuo''s mother''s voice warned. "Don''t be afraid."
Sitihi summoned a wrench, and then placed it on a slot carved into the door. Halankuo''s body placed its wrench on a similar slot nearby. After a few moments, a round light bulb at the top of the door, which had been invisible in the semi-dark room, activated with a blue glow.
The doll and her "sister" removed the keys from the slots. The door slid open with a bang and revealed a corridor that gradually went underground and disappeared into the darkness.
Sitihi took a step forward. Blue lights began to appear in the darkness one by one, uniting into two lines...
The darkness dissipated a little. The lights turned out to be the eyes of the dolls'' heads, which were hanging on the walls between the stone doors.
"This is our crypt," Halankuo heard her mother''s voice. "The bodies of our relatives who lived long ago are here."
"Why are they here?" Halankuo asked mentally. "And the doll heads? What are they doing here?"
"My little sister will tell you about that. She is a doll, so she understands them better than I do."
Halankuo felt her consciousness return to her body. She lowered her head and saw her own hand in front of her, which finally moved as she wished.
“There are many doors here,” Sitihi said. “I couldn’t open them without you.”
“Does she still consider me her sister?” Halankuo asked mentally.
"I didn''t tell her what happened to me," mother''s voice answered. "It''s too hard for a doll to understand. It would be better if you pretended to be me."
Halankuo didn''t like pretending, but in this situation the girl decided to listen to her mother.
"Are there dolls in these rooms?" Halankuo asked.
“Yes,” Sitihi answered. “Their heads hang near the doors. Inside the rooms there should be coffins with the bodies of dolls without heads. If you don''t remove the head, the doll will move. That''s why they are stored disassembled.”
“Do they remove their arms and legs too?”
“Sometimes. The arms and legs don''t get in the way, but the brain is in the head. It''s too important for dolls.”
Sitihi walked to the first door along the corridor, after which she looked at the doll''s head next to her. The face with the blue glowing eyes seemed indistinguishable from the face of the weapon head. If it weren''t for the pink hair that hung down and reached halfway down the wall, this head and the head in Sitihi''s hand would have looked the same.
"It''s a healing doll," Sitihi explained. "She has pink hair."
"The color of the doll''s hair depends on her abilities," the voice in Halankuo''s head suggested. "It can be the color of her aura and abilities, although not necessarily."
Sitihi moved to the next door, and then looked at the head on the wall next to her. Her purple hair only reached her chin, which also distinguished her from the identical heads around her.
"This doll can fly," Sitihi noted. "She has a purple aura, which means she has a special connection with the element of air."
"All of our relatives are connected with the element of air," the voice in Halankuo''s head continued.
Sitihi approached the next head. Red hair peeked out from under a metal, elongated helmet with purple feathers.
“This doll turned itself into a doll,” Sitihi said. “It wears a helmet with feathers. It also has red hair that is not related to the elements.”
“Can people really do this to themselves?” Halankuo frowned.
"Yes," Sitihi answered. "That happens sometimes. As you can see, there are many of our relatives here. They all became dolls, and then someone took them apart and put them here."
Halankuo walked a few steps down the hallway, looking at the heads on the walls. Suddenly, she realized the horror of this place. All of these heads belonged to people who looked like her and her mother, who had become dolls, and right in front of her stood one of them, only it was not disassembled. This doll moved and spoke.
“Maybe we can open the door together?” Sitihi turned her head towards Halankuo, but her body remained in the same position. “We managed to open the door to this corridor together.”
Halankuo wanted to turn back and run away, but remembered that Kyotyoryon was looking for her on the surface. She was more afraid of a sudden meeting with her character than she was of the lifeless dolls.
Halankuo looked at the door and noticed a carved stone slot for a wrench on the right. There was another slot on the left, and a round light bulb above the two.
"I agree," Halankuo said. "Let''s open the door together."
Sitihi approached her "sister", and they simultaneously applied their wrenches to the slots in the door. The light bulb activated with a blue glow, and the door slid aside.
The doll was right. Inside was a room with a stone coffin on a pedestal, but with a closed lid.
Sitihi pointed the key at the lid, and then pushed it aside. Halankuo turned away so as not to see the headless body, even if it was a doll''s.
"Little sis, there''s nothing there," Sitihi''s voice sounded.
"No head?" Halankuo asked.
“There is nothing. The coffin is empty.”
Halankuo turned around. The coffin was indeed empty.
"This is the coffin for me," the voice in Halankuo''s head explained. "I recognize it."
Halankuo looked at the head in Sitihi''s hands, then ran out of the room and looked at the wall near the door. The head that should have been there was missing. There was only a metal rod sticking out of the stone wall.
"What does this mean, mother?" Halankuo couldn''t understand.
"I didn''t want to tell you our story, but I have to," the voice in the girl''s head answered. "Just don''t be afraid."
Halankuo felt her mind separating from her body again. The dungeon disappeared into darkness, but soon the darkness was replaced by a village courtyard with a palisade and a sandbox, in which some object lay.
"Halankuo" did not want to approach the sandbox, since she guessed what was lying there, but she approached, because she did not control her body.
Fortunately, the scary object was not a doll''s head, but just the handle of a small shovel sticking out of the sand. "Halankuo" sat down on the sand and reached out her hand to the object she hadn''t wanted to see a few moments ago, but then she heard a scream and stopped:
“Sis, this is mine!”
A girl half the height of an adult approached the sandbox. She was wearing a blue dress almost to her knees, stockings and shoes. Blue ribbons were braided into her long black hair.
“I didn’t want to take your shovel,” “Halankuo” took her hand away from the object in the sand.
"Halankuo" looked at the ribbons in her "sister''s" hair and understood what it meant:
“Will you become a doll?”
“Yes,” Sitihi answered. “Mom says that my head is still small now. When it grows, Mom can pick around in there.”
Sitihi looked down. A few tears fell onto the sand:
“I don''t want to be a doll. I don''t want my head to be picked around. But dolls have hair of a different color. They are beautiful.”
"Halankuo" hugged her "sister".
“Let’s run away when you grow up,” “Halankuo” suggested.
Sitihi cried for a while, then went to the shovel, picked it up and threw it over the fence.
The surroundings changed again to darkness and that to a dungeon. Now Halankuo could control her body. In front of her stood her already grown-up "little sister", but in the form of a doll.
“As you can see, I couldn’t save Sitihi from turning into a doll,” mother’s voice explained. "Unfortunately, I can''t show you the next episode. It would be too much."
"How is that possible?" Halankuo turned away to the empty wall.
"Our ancestors were doll makers. This crypt is their repository. They turned their children into dolls when they grew up. I ran away from them so as not to become a doll, but Sitihi could not. I am very ashamed in front of her. It is good that she does not feel anything."
Halankuo turned around and saw Sitihi''s face, whose eyes were moving slowly.