The dark dinsion had beco easier to bear as she knew the feeling of imprisonnt and compression it brought with it. Tristessa had understood that it was a matter of sensing the hidden air in order to breathe, every molecule of oxygen concealed in the darkness; for that was what Reiden's Divinity was all about.
One beca one with the shadows and embraced their mysterious, swift, and silent nature. Shadow-veiled, far from the light...or devouring it.
Together with Reiden, they swiftly traversed the interior of the eastern side of the Feydra Forest, dodging trees and vegetation with great ease, as if every obstacle had moved out of the way before them. Or it could also be interpreted as them, in a state of concealed nature, flowing around like the movent of the waters of a river seeking to pass through the easiest spaces available to traverse.
In the end, the how didn't matter, but rather managing to distance themselves from the Dullahan.
In that soundless dinsion, she had had no sense of distance since Reiden embraced her and activated his Divinity. The last thing she'd heard was the neigh of her Nesis's spectral steed, accepting the challenge of chasing them down.
“If only I could tell Reiden more about the Dullahan...” she thought, feeling the contact with his body, but unable to see it or transmit any information. Isolation, stranded in that dark dinsion and bound to Reiden’s decisions. “Damn, it's so hard to breathe...”
The resistance of the air entering her already quasi-static lungs wasn't helping. Her insides were burning, all her vital functions hanging by a thread. Even the beats of her heart were almost imperceptible. As if it was about to stop.
“...!”
Suddenly, the dark space shattered with a violent jolt, as if the material plane had been forced upon it. Tristessa saw the world spinning without control, before she felt the hard contact of the ground. No matter how the grass cushioned so of the impact, she hit her head and other parts of her body until she lost all the montum she'd carried with her from the shadow-speed granted by Reiden’s Divinity.
“Uh, fuck... W-what the hell was that, Rei...” Tristessa saw next to her that the rcenary had suffered the sa setback, only he was already getting up from the ground with a grimace of annoyance and fresh blood dripping from a cut under his right eye. “What happened?”
Clearly, the sudden way in which the [Divinity of Shadowstep] had canceled itself hadn't been intentional. It happened the mont they entered one of the forest's many clearings, where the land surface mingled with geographical faults that raised rocky terrain.
And such place wasn't uninhabited.
“Well damn , look at this, Katriel!” A man lying on a very damaged animal-skin blanket jumped up, alerted by the presence of two unwanted guests. He was wearing old black rags, deliberately blending into the darkness. He wore a hood and a mask over his mouth and nose to maintain his anonymity and protect himself from the cold. “Two fell thanks to the detection rune!”
In the center of the clearing, on the rocky surface, a tentative camp had been set up, consisting of a small bonfire, backpacks, and more sleeping mats. Five n used the place as a refugee; all of them dressed in the sa shabby manner except for the leader, who, in addition to wearing a fine black tunic, also wore lightweight wooden arm and leg armor.
Five people Tristessa was unfortunately familiar with.
“Damn, these guys again! I didn’t expect to et them at least for a couple more hours!” she thought, helped by Reiden to her feet. With their guard up and their weapons drawn, the two not only had to worry about the pursuer behind them, but also about the group of n who had caused them trouble on the previous loop. “This is going to get tough... Also, why the heck did Reiden’s Divinity fail? That didn’t happen before!”
Tristessa looked back at the edge of the forest, and she saw sothing strange at the floor caught her attention: a smooth, hexagonal stone with a black glyph etched into it, as if it had been burned into its surface.
“That’s a rune? Fuck my luck…”
She had heard of those devices; minerals carved with glyphs that channeled thaumaturgical spells on their volu. Severus had ntioned them as a casual topic of conversation. She hadn't given it much thought since, according to the elf, it was very difficult to imbue an object with a spell for proper use, and because over ti, the natural entropy of magic caused it to lose effectiveness.
“I told you it was a good investnt,” said the man nad Bennett, only recognizable to Tristessa by his voice.
“Investnt? You cost a thaumaturge his neck to get it!” another replied, laughing and descending the small hill while unsheathing his rusty dagger. Judging by his voice, it was Zef, soone the gray-eyed girl knew more privately, thanks to his soul that she had returned from the void. “Be thankful Fio knows so thaumaturgy to activate it.”
“Ha! You didn't have faith in ,” said the man nad Fio, laughing, contrary to how Tristessa rembered him: screaming in fear and pain while Zef, transford into a revenant, stabbed him and crushed his head with blows until he died. “Too bad that rune is a one-use rune, anyway.”
“Shut your mouths, you three. Don't get distracted… Or you'll let the old man and that miss escape,” Ludvig said, the second in command after the man who had yet to leave the camp.
That man with black hair and eyes, the only one not wearing a hood, looked on with a smile and his arms crossed, supervising his associates' actions.
Katriel Strauss, the leader of the Ghost Daggers. A threat to End-World. Charismatic and perceptive… Too perceptive, demonstrated by the sudden frown he had when he looked at the two newcors more closely, and his smile faded slightly.
“Guys, wait a mont,” the bandit leader indicated, drawing the attention of the other four n. “What Ludvig said concerns . The word escape… You, old man! Judging by that symbol on your cloak, you must be from the Fireclaw Company! You know very well how this works, so tell , what are you doing running in the middle of the woods?”
Reiden didn’t answer him, nor did he intend to. It was a waste of ti and he and Tristessa were critically running against it, with two serious problems in front and behind. Tristessa understood the rcenary’s lack of knowledge regarding the Dullahan, without having had the opportunity to explain, and now she had to add the Ghost Daggers as another opposing strike force.
Much uncertainty, nurical disadvantage, and a certain level of spiritual fatigue given the perspiration trickling down the sides of his head and the small spasms that made him tremble involuntarily.
“Tristessa,” he whispered her na. “I need several minutes to use my Divinity again. What are we up against? What is that dark phantom? Why is it tornting you?”
“She wants to kill , or for to defeat her. She has no other goal,” she replied halfheartedly, unable to elaborate further without risking talking about what she shouldn't. “She's skilled with a sword and uses dark thaumaturgy. I... I-I've seen her kill an entire team of rcenaries, just for getting in her way.”
Those eyes glittered with the mories of a past that no longer exists, but they recalled the carnage. The screams, heads rolling, a raging beast, and the frozen, lifeless body of that sa man who was standing beside her. Having given his life in vain.
“I see you've been through so tough circumstances…” the rcenary whispered, seeing the suffering written on her face. “This is going to get very ugly, I won't lie to you.”
Yes, she could feel it in his voice: the rcenary saw a high chance of dying that night, just like in Tristessa, which was why he kept her close to him. To protect her above his own well-being. Like the hero he once was and always will be, no matter how much he decides to leave the past behind.
“Hey, man! Answer ! Damn it… We're the Ghost Daggers, you must have heard of us!” Katriel exclaid, offended at being ignored and turning his attention to Tristessa. “What say you, miss? By Kantrus, you're quite pretty. A sha you sll like a rotten dead body… You know about us?”
“Y-yes, I know who you are,” she managed to reply, perhaps the reaction none of them had expected. “Criminals. You roam these lands looking for innocent victims.”
That response made Katriel convinced that sothing strange was going on.
“You know who we are, our reputation, and yet you’re standing there doing nothing. You'd rather stay here than go back the way you ca? That just ans there's sothing more dangerous out there than a group of knife-wielding entrepreneurs like us,” he reasoned, surprising Tristessa even more with his shrewdness. He drew one of his curved daggers, made of black mineral, and pointed it at the darkness behind them. “You’re escaping from sothing… And you just led it to this place, you damn idiots?”
Before anyone could say anything, a sinister voice sounded with unholy magnificence from within the forest, echoing in the darkness. Only Tristessa managed to understand the words of her Nesis, casting dark thaumaturgy without warning:
“Emprosa Athanaton.”
“BACK OFF, REIDEN!”
Tristessa shoved the rcenary in the direction of the Ghost Daggers just in ti to avoid being touched by glyphs that manifested out of thin air, so dark they devoured every speck of light around them. They ford a giant halo on the ground, enclosing the entire periter of the clearing, and when activated, they raised great ghostly walls of solid shadows.
Enclosing everyone in a supernatural cage, from which escape was only possible by flying into the skies like a bird, symbol of Life and Death in so cultures back on Earth.
But no one there had wings like the birds. No one there could fly into salvation. They were trapped. Alone. At the rcy of that foe that could move in between the fabrics of space and ti. A foe that had a sole aim, and she has co to fulfill it.
The Dullahan has co to take Tristessa’s life.
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