“…Mommy! … Mommy, don't let them take ! …Mommy…!”
Crossing the perable wall that divided dream from reality, Tristessa opened her eyes for a mont. A repeated act, seeing an amalgam of dark colors dancing before her eyes and hearing Lucahn's screams reverberating, ever more distant.
He was calling out to Tiara, begging for her help. Help that would never co.
“She's dead…” That thought floated through the sea of shadows that represented Tristessa's anesthetized mind, in which she was floating face up, constantly moved by the invisible current. “Because of … Everyone dies.”
The feeling of being lost, adrift and wandering with no aim in a hostile world that brought her back to the sa place to restart the cycle that ended with her Death, Severus's death, and that of the rcer-Archeos family. Because of her mistakes, her ignorance, and her inability to do anything to change their fate, knowing the dark future that awaited them.
“Lucahn... Jin... I'm sorry...”
She could not tell them how sorry she was for not having done anything to save them from the clutches of the Coven.
“Tiara...I…I’m…”
Even in her pride, she could not tell her how sorry she was, for allowing a fate in which a mother was dood to never et her baby.
“...Still here, Tristessa?”
Unconsciously thinking of that pregnant woman made Tristessa hear her own mother's arrogant voice. And between the comings and goings of dream and reality, she saw that dimly candlelit hallway, with that red carpet leading to the black door.
“Mom...?”
[The Dark Room]. Once again, its mysteries hidden in the inexorable shadows, impossible to traverse.
When she tried to reach out her hands to reach beyond the solid shades, she awoke from the sharp pain emanating from her broken fingers. A shock of electricity ca from her missing right leg, from the burned nerves that were wreaking havoc on her ability to interpret pain.
The constant movent she was subjected to only intensified her suffering. Among so many sources of pain impossible to bear without bursting into tears, she felt the strangulation of her still-held ankle, surrounded by a rope that had penetrated her skin and flesh.
She was being dragged along the ground, pulled by the rope tied to her foot by one of the witches of the Coven.
Dozens of those won were marching in the pitch darkness, held at bay only by several of them carrying torches.
“…”
She didn't even have the strength to grieve. Her eyes felt heavy and throbbed painfully from behind them, and they took their ti to further clear their vision and show Tristessa one thing: she had woken up in a world of nightmares.
Stormy clouds tinted crimson, covering everything as if the heavens were bleeding for miles around. Thunders of black light were breaking through the turbulent celestial currents. All that corrupted light did not reach the surface of the world, leaving the earth sunk in an everlasting darkness that deeply alard Tristessa.
But not as alarming as the countless massive giants standing around.
They were colossal corpses frozen in ti. Eyeless, only with mouths as wide open as if they had died, screaming in terror toward the dark heavens that would never answer their pleas. Their legs joined together before burrowing deep into the infertile and noxious earth. Their multiple arms reached into the darkness, with countless fingers of utter and disproportionate exaggerated length spreading upwards and sideways.
“My God... Where...am I?!” the girl wondered, interspersing her words with pained moans she couldn't censure. “What... are... those things?”
“Girl…”
The surge of adrenaline, stimulated by that voice and the violent beating of her heart, made Tristessa instantly turn her head to her left, her cheek brushing against the rotting earth of that dark cetery.
“Severus!”
Beside her, the blood elf was also being dragged and pulled like her, with a rope tied to his ankles. He was shirtless, revealing his bare chest riddled with violet marks and those of teeth that had pierced the skin. His bloodied face was still as handso as ever, but now corrupted by a sinister-looking glyph, carved on his forehead with a sharp object and emitting a black light that boded an ill on.
But it was his sapphire eyes that caught the girl's attention the most. There was no longer any hatred or indifference directed at her, only infinite weariness and resignation.
“Try not to move too much... If you cause trouble, they'll cut off your limbs,” he warned her, then showed her both hands: not only was the one that had been attacked with a bloody spear missing all its fingers, but the other hand was also in the sa condition. Seeing the dismayed expression that took hold on her face, for the first ti in that tiline, the elf gifted her with a smile. “Don't worry about . I-I can control the blood loss w-with what's left of my thaumaturgy... I've been in worse situations.”
“Really?” she asked, unable to stop crying.
“N-no. Sorry, I lied…” With that, Severus couldn't hold back his laughter, and it cost him a deep wave of pain that made him writhe, as if all that agony was rising from his sides, from his broken ribs. “I've never been outside the protection of an Evil-Warding Pillar before. Truly...it's how the stories tell.”
“What is this place?”
“We are in the Sea of Trees… The version that exists within the Evil Dream; here it is known as the Forest of Dead Titans. I never thought that I would see this accursed hell…,” the elf lanted.
Tristessa shifted her gaze to one of the colossal corpses, the one closest to the path the witches were following without any guidance. Judging by its size and the height of its fingers, it could easily have been the sa length as one of the forest's trees. And judging by the countless numbers of them, appearing and disappearing in the darkness as far as her vision could see, one might also think the elf was right.
Instead of a perpetual, vast mattress of red leaves, the cursed land was partially covered by the erosion suffered by the titans, falling at a steady and uninterrupted pace. It was like a perpetual shower of particulate material chaotically distributed by the foul winds that blew.
“Ashes...” Tristessa muttered, feeling the gray dust on her fingers, tracing lines as she was dragged along. “It's as if the titans had been charred in an instant.”
“Exactly. This must be how the Dark Lady sees the Sea of Trees: a forest of giants she cannot hope to reduce to ash,” the elf hissed. “You can sll fire and Death in the air… But the sll of [Discord] overwhelms everything. It is so foul…so evil…”
Tristessa had received no explanation about the nature of the Evil Dream before, beyond the little she had heard between the lines. Now she had seen it and experienced it firsthand. And from what Severus said, this calamity that seed to have swallowed the entire Dominion had its origin in the Shadow Queen.
“Halt, ladies!” The girl and the elf heard Daiana shout from ahead, putting them both on alert. Obeying, the witches stopped their march, and thus the dragging motion of their two prisoners against the ground. “This is a good place to rest, we must be halfway to the Secret Route! If I don't see a big bonfire and at roasting in ten minutes, I'll definitely eat so of you!”
Amid laughter and whispers that chilled Tristessa's soul, the dozens of witches got to work in the most brutal and ruthless way possible: with rudintary axes and using elental earth thaumaturgy, they began to destroy the base of the nearest titan, revealing that they were made of wood capable of bleeding. Jets of blood flowed with each blow of the axe, with each stalagmite that erged from the ground and impacted its surface, along with a shower of wood fragnts and splinters.
On the other hand, Tristessa's skin crawl upon hearing a monstrous roar coming from the distant, unseen darkness into which a group of witches had ventured. It was so dark to the point where even the light from their torches had been completely devoured by it.
“That sounded like a very hungry Ursall,” the blood elf comnted, breathing raggedly and spitting out blood and saliva that continued to pool in his mouth. “I don't want to imagine what kind of beast they turn into in this nightmare reality... Creatures corrupted by the Dark Lady are more vicious and dangerous here.”
Before Tristessa could ask anything to him, the two witches who had been dragging them with inexplicable, inhuman strength bound them with thick chains. Those chains, upon first contact, proved to be anything but ordinary: Tristessa felt her body give way under its own weight, crushed and unable to move a single inch.
It was the sa for Severus, with the addition of that cursed glyph on his forehead that neutralized any attempt at thaumaturgy.
“Behave yourself, my dear...” the witch urged the elf, growling with hunger near his ear and taking the opportunity to bite him. “Delicious!”
Severus didn't reply, but the hatred he conveyed with his gaze frightened even Tristessa. That only made the witch burst out laughing, but she didn't insist on the abuse any further. She retreated with her companion to enjoy the warmth of the bonfire, which was beginning to burn brightly, thanks to the blood-saturated wood that was apparently a good combustible.
The titan's wounded and shattered legs kept oozing blood that slled very bad, like sothing noxious, like decay. It was so much quantity that it didn't take long to reach the two prisoners, causing Tristessa to raise her gaze, which weighed a ton.
Even from miles up and between her hundreds of fingers, it was very easy to find the Titan's head and see his face. He looked so sad... So hopeless, screaming, and beyond salvation.
Foretelling the fate of Tristessa and the elf at her side.
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