John was robbed of his way out, his offensive elentals, Aclysia and most of his mana. There was a light at the end of all of this however: Thana was bleeding out. He ant that observation quite literally, the wings on her back were growing smaller as they burnt away.
She jumped at him. Gno threw herself between them and miraculously she was there in ti. Ungracefully, they rolled over the ground, coming to a halt with Gno on top of the blood mage. Thana spread her clawed hands.
“Yes,” she giggled when Gno threw a punch. “Struggle,” the stone elental’s fist landed on Thana’s ribs, she spat out a bit of blood but kept grinning as she grabbed onto the stone elental’s extended arm. “Hurt … harder…. kill , KILL !”
The inside of her burning wings suddenly grew spikes, chaotically spread and of varying length they were a sight straight out of a horror movie. They closed on Gno, who desperately tried to get away but was locked by Thana’s grasp. Like inside an iron maiden Gno was penetrated by hundreds of individual spikes.
“Seems like I found a fucking use for these useless shitwings after all,” Thana giggled as she got up. “I got so… excited there for a fucking second.” Halfway up, the blood mage was struck in the shoulder by a Mana Ray. John exploited every window of opportunity he could. “YEEEEEESsssssssss,” she scread, between tornt and delight.
The wound actually needed more than a blink of an eye to close, but she was still too quick to allow John to get a second shot in there. With Gno, his way out had been obliterated. His mind raced, trying to find a way he could still extract her from the area, in that little bit of ti between victory and her falling apart. “Why?!” he asked again, “Why won’t you let save you?!”
“I DON’T WANT TO BE SAVED!” Thana shouted back, and jumped at him again. John was all out of allies who could block for him, Mono was too slow, Undine was made of easily blown-through sli, and so Thana now pressed him to the ground. John tried to conjure a Mana Blade but Thana had none of it. Grabbing both of his hands by the wrist she pressed them to the ground. Mono was about to fire another bolt from the Lesser Lance of Longinus but John stopped her.
‘Maybe she will talk,’ he argued.
‘Dumb reason not to struggle,’ Mono comnted, then added. ‘Probably will work though.’
On top of him Thana was breathing heavily, the wings on her back re sputtering flas now. Her white hair hung over his face, the blue tips almost touching him. He looked deep into her shattered eyes, the violet colour, the golden circle inside, now at a speed where he could barely make out the individual dots.
“Why?” John asked again. He needed an answer. “I just want to help you, why are you this bent on dying?” Her level was reducing at an abnormal rate now. It seed her end was closing in. Yet there was no answer, only her eyes, her now expressionless face above his. “You could just stop, stop right now and make ands. You killed people, many of whom did not deserve it, but I still think you can make this right!”
“Ands? Right?” Thana whispered, then her smirk returned. “Who would I make ands to? The families of those I killed? You think the fucking cultists, the commies, and those fucking rcs you stumbled in with deserve anything? To God? Ahahahaha,” she burst out laughing, the re suggestion making her little body shake. “If there is a God, once I et him, he will have to ask for my forgiveness.”
“Then do it for a selfish reason!” John appealed to another side of her. “Live for yourself, there has to be sothing you want to do!”
“There is one thing….” Thana agreed, John was about to exploit that look of weakness in her eyes when she continued, a fire burning bright within her, “but it would be never worth going back to being a sack of emotionless shit in a corner of a room. You keep insisting ‘I CAN HEAL YOU, I CAN HEAL YOU!’ but you have no fucking idea what that ans. Yes, this decay of my body you could halt. I could take my blood back from the storage of this fucking place. I tried it, it works. In a mont of weakness, I considered prolonging all of this for as long as fucking possible. I believe that you can cure my imdiate death.”
She released John’s left hand from her grasp and tipped against her head. “But you can never fix what they did to . Removing the device in my brain is the sa as killing .”
“What makes you so certain of that?” John had to ask, “maybe there is a way to…”
“There is none,” she said with certainty, “I am a blood mage you idiot, you think I don’t know my own body inside out? I’m broken. It’s either living in slaughter or dying on my terms.” She lowered her hand on his throat and started choking him with a scowl on her face. “Besides, you really think that is all that is fucked up with my head?! My first thought in freedom was not to thank you, it was to murder everyone in the room without giving any shits about their alignnts. I am a monster, John. There is no healing , there is only prolonging my suffering in this fucked up world.”
All of a sudden, Thana released his neck. John took a trembling breath, following the blood mage as she stood up. There was no way to know what that look on her face was. The only certain thing was that she took a step back.
“Well, this has given enough kicks to go on until this life is over.” Thana simply walked away from him. She looked at her hands, then looked over her shoulder at him. Her eyes spelled a certain gratitude towards him, and she had an apologetic smile on her lips. “I’ll just go fizzle out in the corner over there. You can fuck off afterwards. Barrier control should change to you any second now.” The remaining flas on her back ebbed. “There goes the last of my blood.”
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