NOVEL NEXT Chapter 155 - The Reunion III: Dread-Tainted Blood
"S-Severus, please calm down!"
Tristessa's fearful plea was ignored, with all the emotions and misunderstandings at play. She had imagined a situation as extreme as that with the use of her [Divinity of the Dark Room], where Severus would appear with his age-old elven thirst for revenge directed at her, who had nothing to offer her but love and a little selfishness.
Seeing her fears come true was overwhelming… One could never be fully prepared, even knowing it, when the worst is coming.
"Malak Drakan, don't make a scene and calm down before I force you to," Astoria warned, standing next to Tristessa and ready to draw her greatsword.
"That's right, dear brainless elf. You'd better take it easy," Auron added, moving to Tristessa's left, passing between her and her tent, the fingers of his right hand tapping the holster of his revolver in sync.
"Be quiet, both of you, and stand back." The blood elf had left the opposite end of his cane resting on the floor, and the very black marble of the path began to melt from the heat. That was the level of anger he carried. "This is between me and that witch."
Vergil stood in front of his mistress and snarled at Severus in warning. Indicating very clearly in his own way that, at one more sign of hostility, he was going to attack and go straight for his neck.
"Wait, Vergil!" Tristessa begged, wanting to take a tentative step forward, but Astoria blocked her with her left arm. "Severus, you are mistaken! Please let me explain!"
The fog caused by the illusion thaumaturgy rune was so effective that not a single civilian or soldier noticed what was happening. Focused on their exceptional routines, their minds were too preoccupied to even notice that there was anything out of place on that black marble path.
"Mistaken you say, witch?"
The contempt in the blood elf's voice stung Tristessa's soul. He was so furious that the atmosphere, charged with magical energy, vibrated with the excitement of a star about to collapse in on itself. His blood boiled within his veins, between his muscle fibers and tissue. Every last drop, a hellfire inside his body. The crystal of his cane glowing in the same color as his hair, with his soul shard levitating a few inches above it.
"Then tell me why you have that crystal. Tell me how you got it," he demanded, hissing with pure hatred stemming from the fact both he and Tristessa knew.
The answer was obvious, especially given the grim aura that enveloped her.
"Viktor is dead… Murdered by the witches of the Coven, in the Sea of Trees."
As the words left her mouth, for a moment she thought with mind-shattering pain that Severus was going to kill her. She imagined herself surrounded by a pillar of fire, the product of elemental thaumaturgy, causing her body to revive the phantom, instantaneous pain of every nerve cell boiling and melting. The hellish heat igniting skin, melting muscle, and charring bone. That eternal second when her consciousness burned and everything faded away… Only to begin again.
But that wasn't the case now. She saw the weight of the news bearing down on him, the way he gritted his teeth with wrath, salivating like a beast, with bloodshot eyes… And with no concrete attempt to attack, suffocated by the tremendous guilt that loomed over him and his rage.
"By Kantrus, Viktor… I knew I shouldn't have forced you to go alone," he lamented, shaking his head and biting his lower lip in an unconscious attempt to divert the focus of the pain. "H-how did it happen? What did those damn lunatics do to him?"
Seeing that there was no obvious hostility, but without lowering their guard against someone emotionally unbalanced, neither Astoria nor Auron had to draw their respective weapons yet. A good sign.
"I'll explain everything, Severus," Tristessa assured him tentatively, taking several steps forward until she reached Vergil and patted him on the head to make him lower his guard. "Let me introduce myself: my name is Tristessa. Tristessa Irandell, and I am a friend of the Mercer-Archeos."
That was a mistake Tristessa almost paid in full: the blood elf waved his hand, and the black path between them suffered such a sudden change in temperature that the very air around them distorted their vision. Any further, and she would have burst into flames.
"Be very careful what you say… The Mercer-Archeos are my dearest friends in this Gods-forsaken world," he warned her, while Astoria and Auron showed their silent concern upon hearing those two surnames.
"I know. They told me a lot about you… About what a wonderful person you are, the only one who hasn't abandoned them…" Tristessa decided to gather bravery to face the stifling heat and took a step forward, guided by her feelings for that man. The soles of her boots began to melt, the air burning inside her nose and drying her eyes, forcing them to squint. "They can't wait to see you again, you know? Jin wants to talk to you about your latest experiments… Tiara wants you to bring them food, since she's sick of cooking spinnaraks… And Lucahn really misses his best friend, with whom, along with Gaal, he wants to play and run all over the meadow behind the Royal Hunter's House."
Hearing those very specific details, Severus's vengeful soul froze, as if the sun had gone out, and the embers of what had been a violent bonfire were at the mercy of the immeasurable cold of the darkness of the infinite cosmos.
"But the Coven… Their daughter, Daiana, she wants to slaughter them."
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Now a terrible fear had taken the place of his fury, filling his mind with the horrific scenarios he had feared for years. Every time he traveled to visit his friends, every time he saw that house from the top of the hills, every time he knocked on the door and shouted its name, waiting for a reply from any of the three Mercer-Archeos on the other side, inviting him in…
Fearing that one day silence would answer his call.
"T-They… Tell me they didn't…" he sobbed, on the verge of crying tears that, in the lingering heat, would boil and evaporate before they could slip and fall to the scorching ground. "They…?"
In response, Tristessa took another step forward, traversing through the magical mist that absorbed the heat released by the elf.
"Lady…?" Auron tried to warn her, but Astoria silenced him with a quick gesture of her hand. Without saying a word, she told him not to interfere. "…"
The two warriors left the girl to face the situation on her own. She reached out to Severus and took his free hand, between them enclosing that brilliant blue crystal stained with Viktor Emma's blood, vibrating uncontrollably. The natural cold of that object was supplanted by the elf's inhuman body heat; she felt the burning sensation invade every neuron in her brain as every inch of her hand's skin burned.
"They're alive! We escaped from the Coven and a caravan of mercenaries from the Fireclaw Company are protecting them! But it won't be for long, and… ah! I-I need…your help…to save them from that fucking, insane bitch!" she screamed, mostly to resist the excruciating pain of the burning skin on her hands. "Ahhh, shit, SHIT! IT HURTS! FUCK!"
"Damn it, Silverthorn, I have to help her…!"
"No, don't interfere! If you see Malak Drakan raise his cane, you can fill his head with lead then!"
"…!"
Severus forced Tristessa to let go with a rather abrupt push, taking pity on her agony and silencing the two warriors.
"You said… Save them from the Coven? With my help?"
"S-shit…" the girl swore under her breath, staring in horror at her trembling palms. Red, wrinkled skin, covered in blisters. Pain that made tears flow endlessly from her eyes, yet insignificant compared to the indescribable torture of being burned to Death at the hands of that same man's revenant in front of her. "Huh?"
That man with long, crimson hair who looked at her with a coldness uncharacteristic of him. Paradoxically combining with the desolate feeling conveyed by that illusory fog; isolating the four people present from the outside world which unfolded without their presence.
A veil of mystery, a bit sinister… Just like the events he began to describe.
"While the dimensional shift event was taking place… I was in my workshop, respecting curfew. I was alone… Do you understand, girl? There was no one else in my workshop, just me. Or so I thought."
The infernal heat was already dissipating, unlike the thaumaturgic mist. Severus was the one who closed the distance with her this time, while he looked at his soul-shard with somber intensity. Before bringing it closer to its twin, causing the mutual destruction of both.
"I was preparing alchemical beverages to sell… Until I f-felt someone watching me." A drop of pure fear fell upon that river of sounds called voice, contaminating it from one endless edge to the other in the blink of an eye. "A presence. Something lurking in the corners of my workshop, submerged in shadows… Something vile, something so evil… That presence was so imposing and heavy that I've never felt so disheartened in my life. I-I stopped feeling the presence of my ancestors, their memories, their desire for revenge. I was a lost child amidst a world of darkness…"
"What the hell…? Severus never told me anything like this before. Or is it something new in this loop? And why is he telling me this?" Tristessa conjectured and became so distracted that she realized too late when the blood elf left his cane levitating a few millimeters off the ground. He took her two hands, wounded by his internal, hellish heat. "Ugh! S-Severus…!"
But he continued, lost in those dark thoughts that certainly had left a deep scar in his mind.
"I forgot I knew thaumaturgy. That I had the means to compel an unclean spirit to reveal itself. Because that wasn't a spirit… No, no, no… Those yellow eyes staring at me from the darkness were not those of a being from the spiritual plane." Without saying the spell aloud, Severus conjured healing glyphs between both hands, which instantly began to work: reducing the swelling, dehydrating the blisters, and regenerating the dead skin. "I couldn't move from fear. That thing stared at me for a long time, never leaving the veil of shadows… Until finally, it spoke, with a male voice so…so human, but at the same time with malice, with hatred, with wisdom. As if it were more than one voice speaking at once."
Tristessa's hands were healed, and she didn't even notice. She couldn't, so lost in Severus's blue eyes, both of them immersed in that brief account of what had just happened minutes ago in his workshop.
"And he said to me: 'The forlorn will die. An [inescapable future]. Forbidden knowledge, at the apex of the ethereal monument created by all your sins.' Once that last word entered my head, his presence disappeared. But the fear in my soul remained. I did not stop feeling that dread, not even when I later felt my soul shard vibrate, not even when I came to meet you and everything that happened began to make sense. This dread lingers… It won't go away!"
Severus took a deep breath, in a vain attempt to rid himself of that unspeakable terror that refused to leave him, before asking her:
"Girl… Are they going to kill the Mercer-Archeos?"
The blood elf sought explanations for something Tristessa had understood from the moment she heard those two words spoken one after the other. It had been a constant focus in all the previous loops, like a warning from which no one could escape.
"An inescapable future… That is what the witches of the Coven seek to fulfill. I know it. I lived it, I experienced it," she let him know, with the firmness of a survivor. Of someone who had seen hell. "And it's what I try to avoid. I believe my intervention in the fate of the Mercer-Archeos provoked a response from those who wish to kill them. I don't know what they hope to gain from their death, but I will not let them succeed. I swear to you, Severus."
The magical mist began to disperse. Auron and Astoria decided to walk over to them, accompanied by Vergil. There was no longer any hostility, only a common feeling that united Tristessa and Severus: dread, so deep that it permeated the blood pumping from their tortured hearts.
"And that presence? Do you know who it was...?"
"...I think you have the same suspect in mind like I do," the gray-eyed young woman told him, now attracting the attention of curious passersby. They had no idea of the dark machinations unfolding behind the scenes, and probably never will. For their sake, and of the whole of Entrana. "The [Lord of Forbidden Knowledge]... [Moebius]."