NOVEL NEXT Chapter 161 - Binary Star Lost in Darkness
"RAAAAA!"
The moment Vergil let out a mighty war roar, the ethereal shadows surrounding the Dullahan gathered to form the shape of her black, red-eyed steed. Its neigh, an ominous omen, spread chill not only into the air but also into Tristessa's burning spirit.
"I won't be so easily frightened now!" she shouted at her enemy and gave her beast two harmless slaps on the back. "Show them your speed!"
Vergil took those words to heart, propelling himself like a bolt. Toward the ruined western stairs that led to the first floor of the gallery, which ran along the wall and was opened on several fronts by battlements, now collapsed or burned by Ithrendyl's centennial attack. They kicked up ash along the way, forming a noxious gray mist that smelled of Death. The moonlight penetrating between the destroyed battlements and the holes in the wall gave it a sinister and ghostly appearance, like a portent of the world beyond the material one. They leaped several times between the broken steps, dodging holes and cracks, forcing Tristessa to grip more tightly with her left hand.
"Be careful, Vergil…!" Looking back, Tristessa's heart made a violent jump into her throat when she saw the Dullahan behind her. Almost catching her, flying in the cloud of darkness of which her steed was part of. "FASTER!"
"To escape is a futile effort! Accept your fate and defeat me!" The dark knightess brandished her sword and made a horizontal sweep that nearly severed Tristessa's head, had it not been for the aracross' speed increasing and hurtling through the dust and ash covered gallery in a blur. "If you don't end my life, then you will be the one who will die again!"
"How many times must it happen until you're satisfied?!" the girl shrieked, glancing sideways with watery eyes due to the ash-laden wind blowing against her.
"Until you defeat me..." The Dullahan raised her head, not only enveloped in Discord, but also in a sudden aura of malevolent and voracious magical energy. "Longinus Cruxis!"
"Oh no..."
Tristessa and Vergil left the Dullahan and her mount behind as they reached the end of the gallery, entering an internal corridor of the castle, the main building of the fort. In addition to being scorched to the ground until nothing remained but melted armor and charred bricks, that place plagued by pasts pain and suffering hadn't had enough: the walls, ceiling, and floor were covered in hundreds of rings filled with dark thaumaturgy glyphs. Devouring every speck of light around them, plunging the corridor into the most desperate and terrifying darkness…
"VERGIL, LOOK OUT!" Tristessa shouted as spears shaped like physical shadows began to emerge from the magical rings. Ornamented with phantasm-like figures of ouroboros along the shafts; grazing their backs, they were inches away from shattering their souls and sending them into the void, with one clear exception. "SHIT!"
Out of nowhere, the rings and spears that would have undoubtedly killed both rider and beast shattered like glass, into hundreds of thousands of shards. A chain reaction rippled forward that cleared the rest of the corridor and filled it with new nightlight, guiding them outside.
Tristessa's despair vanished as quickly as it had arrived. Giving way to a mischievous smile that expressed in silence many feelings at the same time; directed toward the architect of that hidden thaumaturgy that had just saved her and Vergil's lives.
"Let's go!"
The corridor's exit connected to another gallery that ended in a completely collapsed section of the wall, piled up as a mountain of rubble. And at the top, illuminated by the light falling from the stars of the Cosmos, stood the Dullahan mounted on her steed of shadows.
"...!"
Tristessa couldn't help but be entranced by such a regal and equally terrible presence that sought to destroy her. Surrounded by a miasma of darkness, spreading everywhere and devouring everything in its path. That gauntlet of dark metal, with thimbles like claws that gripped the full-helm.
That empty, hollow gaze inside, almost hidden among countless tongues of shadows…
"You summoned more pieces to sacrifice in your name, my Nemesis? More bodies to add to your mountain, so you may rise while others fall?" the Dullahan asked, her terrible, guttural voice spreading from all the darkness surrounding her. She watched from above, waiting for Tristessa to meet her and face her fate. "I can feel their souls, stalking me, believing themselves to be hidden in the shadows… Not knowing that the shadows belong to me! I am the Darkness, and they cannot hide from me! They will all fall, one by one… Until only you remain."
"No one will die tonight, only you!" Tristessa bellowed, adrenaline clouding her fear of Death. "Vergil!"
The aracross roared, in defiance against the ethereal neigh of the shadow steed, before leaping. Not toward the mountain of rubble where the Dullahan waited as a queen of destruction, but in the direction of the courtyard. With nothing between but air between them and the ashy ground.
"Shit!" The girl's scream at free fall was heightened by her lack of experience as a she-dragoon, reflected as a Level One in her Black Mirror. It was inevitable that she couldn't maintain her balance, and she fell off as soon as Vergil hit the ground, trying to support their weight with his strong legs. "Ugh!"
The girl crashed back into the blanket of ash, crushing some Ghost Lotuses and feeling the hardness below of a petrified, dead soil. Lying on her side, almost half her face buried in the charred remains of the dead. She tasted the necrotic ash on her lips, on her tongue, a harbinger of doom for anyone who crosses the path of the divine fire of that black-winged beast, subdued by a servant of the Supreme Evil.
"Uh...fuck..." While trying to regain her breath, Tristessa groped almost blindly for her hunting knife. She placed her hands on the ground and watched in horror as the ash seeped between her fingers, beneath her nails, and stained the saliva that flowed from her mouth in a thin, steady black line. When she looked up, all her aching bones and the repulsion she felt were insignificant compared to what she saw. "VERGIL!"
The black-furred lesser demon had wanted to run toward her, but the Dullahan's shadow had fallen into the courtyard almost at the same time as them. Disappearing her steed, the knightess intercepted Vergil and kicked him so hard in the side that he was thrown back against the wall, letting out a howl of profound pain. His wail was cut off the moment he crashed against the hard, blackened bricks, before falling into the ash-covered ground and not making another sound, nor moving.
Stolen novel; please report.
"N-no… Vergil…" she lamented, a bit relieved to feel that her [Divinity of Accursed Existence] had no function in her beast's body. Life continued within him, but for how long? She had no chance of doing anything for him, since the Dullahan stood between them. Predicting her, knowing her movements, intentions, to perfection. It couldn't be any other way, because they were both the same. "Damn it! More time… Not yet…"
Now standing and ignoring the stabbing pain in her head and back, Tristessa took a fighting stance, breathing deeply to shake off the sudden fear that was making her tremble from head to toe.
"The coin spins. Our existences linked by the will of beings of a higher stratum," the daughter of the divine expressed herself, her black cape fluttering like wings of despair and her immaculate armor imposing her presence like a giant, a symbol of invincibility. "You and I. We are one, destined to die at each other's hands. Tortured souls trapped in an endless Purgatory. Forsaken, binary star lost in Darkness…"
Tristessa remembered every combat movement the Dullahan made with that curved sword, its tip grazing the ground as she advanced toward her. Her hard, dark footsteps rising ashes in the air and contaminating them with Discord. She had reviewed everything in the Projector Room, and even then, she couldn't see a way to defend herself without risking the same thing happening again, as the one time she dared to attack that dark knightess.
Her hunting dagger might be destroyed, and her hand be severed, with her fingers torn and lying over a pool of blood and ash.
"…I can lose a hand, as long as they can…" she said in her mind, but her body was forcing her to retreat. Her survival instinct was overcoming her courage; the fear of the Abyss corrupting her valor, reducing it to the very ashes she stood on. "I don't want to die…"
"Ur Firan Tinax!"
A voice charged with power echoed in the courtyard, and the next second, a pillar of fire roared with an intensity worthy of the burning hells, enveloping the Dullahan and enclosing her within.
Feeling that wave of heat reaching her, Tristessa shielded herself with her arms; a reflex to the memory of the inhuman pain and extreme fear she had experienced when that same spell had incinerated her to Death. At the hands of the revenant of that same blood elf who was descending upon the courtyard. Wearing that same formal black shirt and pants, and that tie red-colored as fresh flowing blood; floating as she had seen him do when they met in the Sea of Trees.
Back then, a crimson-haired angel falling from the heavens, planting the first seeds of the love she felt for him.
"Sev…!"
Only now there was no smirk of amused confidence on his face: now the wrath of his exterminated kind abounded, without forgiveness. An avatar of the slain elves, filled with a desire for revenge, igniting the blood flowing from self-inflicted wounds on his arms.
"Plasmos..." The strands of boiling blood that floated around him gathered in the form of ten dark red spheres, abounding in a ferrous odor that began to compete with the spiritual toxicity of Discord. As the Dullahan struggled through the wall of scorching fire, Severus pointed his cane, glowing the same color as his hair, at her and bellowed, "Fahreus Plasmos Irit!"
All the spheres transformed into glyphs of elemental blood thaumaturgy that instantly erupted into a mist from which rain began to fall. Heavy, sickening, corrosive drops. They stung the Dullahan's black steel armor and seeped through the gaps, into her body, composed of shadows and susceptible to magical damage.
"Argh…!" Screams of pain, the agony of a damned soul. Sounding very similar to Tristessa's cries when she was suffering the everlasting agony of dying. "Your efforts will change nothing! You…!"
"What an unbearable voice!" Following that wail, several gunshots from two revolvers came from the southern wall, right behind Tristessa. "Learn to shut your mouth, you armored phantom!"
The bullets hit the Dullahan straight in the head. Sparks flew through the dense aura of darkness surrounding her, forcing her to scream, with no one nearby to destroy their mind as had happened to Katriel Strauss. Still, with only Severus and Auron listening, the latter standing on the edge of the wall and analyzing the results of their shots, they suffered minimal consequences manifested in psychological attacks and bleeding from facial orifices. Weak for the moment… Unless they allow the Dullahan to spread her influence through her eldritch voice more.
"Anx Erasil Mashura!"
A glyph seal made itself felt among the ashes, causing a large part of the surrounding layer to hover in the air. Turning it into five large spears of compacted ash, propelled with dizzying speed, flying straight toward the gunslinger…
"Auron!" Tristessa cried, seeing him leap from the wall to dodge the magical projectiles, rolling as he hit the ground. The impact against the wall was almost explosive, a deafening noise followed by a cloud of dust and debris that flew everywhere. "Are you okay?!"
"I will be. My [Essential Dilution] isn't as effective… Magical energy only sharpens my reflexes. I could have taken a nap while I watched that attack, but my body can't take much punishment," he commented, standing up and lifting his hat from the ground. "A part of me hoped that your story about your Nemesis was a delusion…"
Sighing, he shook the ashes off it and placed it on his head, while Severus finished descending and conjured walls of ice to block the Dullahan's advance through the rain of blood.
"We've seen enough of what your otherworldly friend is capable of, lady. We won't wait and watch any longer."
"But, Auron! There's still so much to…!"
The gunslinger holstered one of his revolvers, to give her a comforting squeeze in the shoulder. He also gave her an invisible smile behind his ash-stained handkerchief.
"Leave her to us and be ready to finish her off when you see fit."
"I agree with the outlaw!" Emerging from one of the hallways whose entrances hadn't yet been blocked by debris, Astoria sprinted past them like lightning and straight for the Dullahan. "Stop that rain!"
"You are impatient, Blackguard," Severus hissed, holding a small half-used bottle of Spirit Potion. He obeyed, the crystal on his cane stopped glowing. Right away, the elemental spell ended and the mist and the falling drops dispersed. "Try not to die…"
Tristessa watched those thaumaturgically summoned ice walls turn black. The physical manifestation of darkness corrupting their composition of infinite fractals, just as in that fateful loop when the Dullahan attacked the Derelict Outpost. Back then, the gray-eyed girl had fallen into one of the deepest pits of despair she had ever known, struggling to climb out only to fall into an even deeper one.
On Nekrom, the fall seemed never to end, its inhabitants permanently teetering on the edge of the abyss, like Tiara. Like Aurelia.
But now…
"RIAAAAA!"
With that war cry, Astoria brandished her greatsword with both hands and charged at the wall of black ice, shattering it into dozens of pieces before the Dullahan could. The blade's edge clashed with the curved saber's, a display of physical strength beyond human limits, sending shivers down Tristessa's spine.
With her hopes as strong as ever, she watched Astoria overcome the dark knightess' resistance and force her back.
Hoping that the torment imposed by her Baptism in Ruins would finally be the last.