NOVEL NEXT Chapter 164 - Angel of Rebirth II: Rune-Etched Crown
The sharp pain that burned every neuron in her brain not only appeared as it did every time she overused her Divinity to raise the dead. This time she also encountered a barrier.
An external influence that stopped her in her tracks toward that light-switch cord, which was now a golden chain that ran through the ceiling and floor of an isolated room. Filled with black gears on the walls stained with filth and dried blood, turning and moving internal machinery that kept the chain moving nonstop.
That was until she attempted to impose her presence, above that entity who controlled the ethereal room with a sinister smile, hidden in the darkness.
"Ahhh…! Kajjj…!"
Blood capillaries burst beneath the skin of Tristessa's face, her eyes rapidly turning red and expelling blood from the corners. A testament to the titanic effort her dark soul was making to fight against that monstrous influence that had brought the Captain back to life; managing to stop him just in time, inches from reaching Auron's stomach.
"M-MOVE, AURON!" she begged, the crushing weight of the Divinity becoming an unbearable torture. "PLEASE!"
"Are you insane?! I'm not going to waste this golden opportunity!" Hearing the gunslinger's triumphant voice, Tristessa reasoned with what little clarity remained in her brain that he owned the ultimate Divinity to have tricks up his sleeve. One of those, a high-caliber, single-shot pistol, which he pulled out of nowhere and pointed at the Captain's head. "You're my favorite Stranger, Tristessa!"
BANG!
The powerful blast from that hand cannon was such that Auron had to use both hands to withstand the recoil. The bullet not only shattered the flimsy metal helmet but also caused the Captain's head to explode in a cloud of gore. Pieces of skull and blood instantly returned to their original state of dust and ash, as did the rest of his body, armor, and weapon.
Endrel's influence faded, taking the chain and the morbid room with it, causing Tristessa's punished soul to breathe a sigh of relief. The same couldn't be said for the girl's flesh-and-blood body, forced to move or be impaled.
"I can't breathe! Mother, Father, help me!"
"It hurts! May the Gods have mercy on me, please!"
"Ugh, fuck!" She couldn't catch a minute's rest: two women armed with spears, their armor so battered and unable to fully regenerate, were heading straight for her. Thin as the cadavers they were; reddened skin, eyeless sockets, and dehydrated, wrinkled, and brittle faces. In perpetual lament and unable to weep and purge the suffering staining their lost souls. "Damn... huh?"
Confused, Tristessa saw that only those two resurrected soldiers were advancing toward her, while the rest of that entire squad and those arriving through the corridors focused on Auron and Severus.
The gunslinger had retrieved his weapons and was constantly dodging the swordsmen's slashes. Trying to gain distance so he could fire without risking one of those sabers slashing at his arms. Severus, meanwhile, was still locked inside his own earthen prison, surrounded by soldiers armed with war-hammers who constantly pounded the hard but not invincible surface.
They were being overwhelmed. Even though those undead soldiers were shadows of their former selves, the numerical disadvantage was ridiculous. The table had turned; the risk of dying higher than ever.
"If only Astoria…," she thought and felt awful. Disgusted with herself, as if disrespecting her sacrifice for wishing she were there, with them, helping them more than she already did. "No, she's not dead! She can't! Focus, Tristessa Irandell, you cunty bitch!"
Still, Astoria's absence was devastating. Not only was it a substantial loss in their combat power, but the thought of her fighting the Dullahan alone filled Tristessa with such desolation that she found it difficult to focus and dodge the soldiers' spears.
"Grr, ah!"
The girl mimicked a move she had learned from Katriel Strauss, barely dodging one of the soldiers' thrusting attempts and gripping the shaft with her free hand. She didn't give the resurrected woman time to drop the weapon and used her dagger to stab her at the base of her neck.
"Ah, Ithrendyl! Damn you, daughter of Evil!" the soldier sobbed, her voice fading as the dagger's blade pierced deeper. "Princess…of…Sin…!"
As blood began to flow with a pungent, sickening smell of chaos and Discord, the reconfiguration into ash took place throughout the soldier's body.
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"Poor souls," she thought, watching her return to her original state, disintegrating and collapsing at her feet. Feeling her broken soul cruelly returned to infinity. "If only I could…"
"Watch out, lady!" A hollow-point bullet to the head from behind was enough to reduce the other soldier who was about to attack the girl to ash. Then two shots at two others resurrected, a kick that knocked one with very little armor to the ground, and a quick reload of the revolver's cylinders. "My ammo isn't infinite, you know! If this keeps up, it's going to get ugly fast!"
"Wait, Auron! The soldiers aren't coming back once you kill them! I can feel it with one of my Divinities!" she exclaimed, referring to Accursed Existence and the esoteric evidence it brought her: once the chain stopped, it wouldn't move again. "If we defeat them all, they won't come back!"
"Easy for you to say… Ah, damn it!" By sheer luck, Auron had dodged a horizontal slash that would have split his stomach in two. He counterattacked with two shots to the knees of the soldier facing him, making his legs buckle in abnormal positions. And without screaming or expressing any pain, the enemy was finished off with a shot to the head. "SEVERUS, STOP ACTING LIKE A COWARD AND HELP ME!"
"…if I were a coward…"
Suddenly, in addition to hearing the elf's voice, Tristessa and Auron felt a suffocating, hellish heat spreading through that hall filled with shadows and ashes. Escaping from the interstices of the prison of burnt stone and earth, along with countless drops of a boiling, incandescent red liquid…
Bloodflame.
"…THEN MY DREAM WOULD NOT BE TO KILL THE SHADOW QUEEN!"
The magic holding the earthen walls together shattered. Reduced to dust and incinerated before the sword of bloody fire conjured by Severus through his Fireon Ensis Plasmos spell. And then, it was the turn of the resurrected soldiers to burn to Death again with each slash of that agent of vengeance. Simple, novice swings and stabs, but deadly for both victims and perpetrator.
"Try not to burn me with that thing!"
"Only if you stay out of my way, gunslinger!"
The two men dispatched the remaining soldiers with swift effectiveness; the few who had decided to attack Tristessa couldn't even get close: they fell, riddled with bullets or cut and set ablaze by the extreme temperatures.
"That was..." the girl whispered, watching the last soldier fall at the blood elf's feet, engulfed in flames until he returned to ash, with nothing left to consume. "Sad."
Such a simple word to describe the hollowness in both the center of her frozen chest and the main hall. Ash covered the entire floor, just as it had been before they had even set foot inside. There was no evidence or sign to indicate that a bloody battle between the living and the resurrected had taken place inside. Nothing to indicate that lost souls who had suffered horrific Deaths had been forced back to life only to be killed again, in tragic irony, by more fire.
It wasn't fair. It was cruel, inhuman... But the mortal coil was irrelevant to those above; what defined the human soul was superfluous in the eyes of the Gods, angels and devils.
Sighing, grieving inside, Tristessa's eyes wandered from the ashen dust to the sword made with a combination of blood and fire thaumaturgy. And, by extension, to the hand that was holding it and its arm.
"S-sev, your…!"
"I told you not to call me that." Ignoring the pain of the skin on his limb, where the bloody saber emanated, suppurating and scorching, Severus didn't want to waste any more time and prepared to head outside the castle. "Make haste! Silverthorn might still be alive!"
Auron looked at Tristessa and nodded, both knowing that the blood elemental spell was likely Severus's last that night: it was visible on his face, sweaty and covered in unbearable agony, and on the almost broken crystal of his cane. He followed the thaumaturge, turning around at the entrance to the hall to continue down the corridor, and Tristessa would have followed him without hesitation if not for a voice behind her that stopped her in her tracks:
"■ ■ ■ ■"
A whisper impossible to understand or interpret. A whisper that carried with it the metallic sound of the [Golden Chains] of the endless cycle of Death and Resurrection. A whisper that struck terror into Tristessa, an ineffable, nightmarish chill, worthy of the state between Life and Death that the In-Between represented.
She slowly turned her head to the right, only to glance sideways. With no intention of turning completely around and allowing her mind to shatter at the sight of what lurked in the darkness of the room, now that there was no longer an orb of light or boiling blood to illuminate every corner.
"…"
But there was one small speck of light, though ominous by nature. The glow of red runes etched on a black metal crown. Casting that accursed light downward, exposing spinning gears, torn and fleshy wings, and bluish lips that allowed a grin to form from ear to ear, exposing teeth blackened by rot.
"Endrel..." Now she said that name aloud, belonging to that angel who watched over her, directly connected to her [Dark Resurrection]. She closed her eyes, feeling terror caressing her neck, a vile and sinister seduction; uncertainty about the consequences of what she was about to say. "I will defeat your daughter."
Opening her eyes again, finding the light from Severus's bloodsword illuminating the hallway halfway, Tristessa left the main hall. A firm step, leaving her doubts in that spacious room where shadows danced endlessly, and the Angel of Resurrection watched silently.
A sovereign ruling over Death and Rebirth, her unholy crown the fundamental symbol of her dominion.
Patient, like the inevitability of time. Letting events unfold as they should. At the hands of Chaos.