Things were looking dire.
Two out of five rcenaries were dead. One was incapacitated, and other was protecting their employer. Reiden was the only one standing to fight against the Dullahan, while Tristessa stared in the distance, a shaless spectator that was doing absolutely nothing in that situation that was, in essence, her own fault.
“B-boss… You can defeat her,” Dom told him, agonizing over the burns that were killing him from within. “Stop wasting ti with and go! Show her who Reiden Malak Invran is!”
The rcenary pushed him back with the flat side of his flamberge blade, expending the last of his energy, and then lost consciousness.
Reiden had no ti for anything. Not to watch over his fallen comrades, not to catch his breath, not even to check how many broken ribs he had. His bloodlust, immortalized in his bearded, elder face, drove him to run toward the Dullahan at a speed almost as fast as hers, to the point where he beca one with the shadows and attacked her with all his skill, materializing in front of her.
“It's been a while...since I've seen the boss use his [Divinity of Shadowstep],” Tristessa heard lian say, so depressed that his face had filled with tears. “You can do it, Boss! Finish her!”
Slash after slash, blocking and parrying with his dagger, and then attack after attack, which the Dullahan countered. Reiden's skill was on par with his opponent's, but even so, Tristessa couldn't have any faith in victory.
She couldn't, seeing Lufreya's bleeding corpse, Bran's severed head, or Dom's unresponsive body… Fear had taken hold of her, and in her utter helplessness, she could only stare and repeat the Dullahan's words in her head over and over again.
There was no way, not in a million lifetis, that she could defeat her Nesis.
How could she, when not even a group of experienced rcenaries could, being slaughtered before her eyes?
How could she, when even a veteran like Reiden Malak Invran couldn't cause any more damage without receiving painful punishnt in return?
For every thrust Reiden managed to land on exposed parts, the Dullahan responded by striking him in parts of his arm and leg armor with such force that her sword had the impact of a war-hamr. Every ti he used his Divinity to try to take the invader by surprise, she also beca one with the shadows to counter the strategy and maintain the status quo.
Reiden couldn't win.
“Ha! Phew!” The veteran limped, an exposed wound on his right leg causing him to lose blood at a rapid pace. And yet, he attacked again, with an ace up his sleeve. “Now, lian! Do it!”
The rcenary adept in thaumaturgy, with pain in his eyes and his wand already raised and ready, shouted:
“Erd Escant Vafun!”
Three rings of glyphs emanating light-blue luminescence were summoned and enclosed both Reiden and the Dullahan. Extre cold gripped the outpost, and in the blink of an eye, the glyphs shattered, raising a thick, circular wall of ice. The air around it solidified, and layers of frost covered the smooth stone floor. The campfire finally died out, plunging the courtyard into a gloom held only dimly at bay by the light of the two moons.
For a second, despite Reiden's possible death, Tristessa felt a shred of hope that the Dullahan had been defeated.
An illusion, a small light; the only one left in the Derelict Outpost… Dood to be devoured by the darkness that was spreading throughout that pillar of ice.
Crack. Crack. Crack.
The ice, now black and corrupted, began to fissure in dozens of places across its surface, and like Tristessa's spirit, it crumbled into thousands of pieces.
“B-boss...!”
Reiden's lifeless, frost-bitten body fell backward. He had died with his eyes open and full of determination, right to the end.
The Dullahan had suffered no further damage other than a few sections of her armor covered in magical permafrost. She advanced over Reiden's corpse, stepping on his head and shattering it into hundreds of pieces as if it were a statue receiving a sledgehamr blow.
“Face , my Nesis! Defeat !”
The girl with gray eyes, filled with tears, wanted to flee. She was so afraid of Death, of that impossible-to-defeat divine warrior, that she wouldn't have thought for a second longer about getting up and running for her life. But her legs wouldn't respond; they were surrendered, subdued, and accepting the approaching fate.
Accepting the doom of that dark knightess who was taking hard, cold steps in her direction…
“You! Tin bitch!” A golden statuette struck the Dullahan’s back, stopping her in her tracks. “That’s right, turn around!”
Mada Luchie was the one who threw that statuette at her. For a tiny old woman, the anger etched between the wrinkles on her face was frightening.
“Do you think you can kill my employees without any repercussions?” she asked, passing by the only rcenary left alive.
She walked slowly, hunched over, and with both hands behind her back. There wasn’t a shred of fear in her… What kind of terrifying experiences had she been through that made her not fear an unknown supernatural entity like that Dullahan?
“Mada Luchie…” lion tried to dissuade her, but the old woman shrugged, removing the thaumaturge’s hand.
“Go. Run away, and don’t look back. I’m releasing you from your contract,” she told him. “You should do the sa, lass.”
Tristessa t Karla Luchie’s gaze and saw, to her horror, wild red eyes, black slits instead of round pupils, like a feline’s.
“If you two stay, you’ll be a hindrance to . You’ll be in more danger. Once a natural-born from [Crywolf] unleashes the beast within…”
Her fingernails fell off, along with lines of blood, to make way for sharp claws. Her skin tore in spatters of blood, as her body grew painfully more than double its size, tabolizing with such exponential velocity that it released hellish heat around her. And her gray hair lengthened into a wild mane, partially hiding a lupine mouth filled with hundreds of teeth.
Both Tristessa and lian witnessed Mada Luchie transform into a beast that finished her sentence with a monstrous roar:
“…THERE’S NO WAY TO STOP THEM!”
The ground shook with a mini-earthquake as the white beast roared and leaped toward the Dullahan, who turned into shadows to avoid it and move in the direction of the collapsed tower. But with her enhanced beastly vision, able to see in the dark, Karla changed direction and charged at the gaseous shadows.
Both beast and invader crashed against the wagons full of riches, scattering the rchandise in all directions like a shower of gold and silver. And then their combined montum led them straight to the tower, shaking it to its foundations and causing its premature collapse.
It was then that Tristessa was given permission by her legs to move. And she ran, like never before, stopping for nothing, her broken mind focused solely on survival.
“I DON’T WANT TO DIE! HELP, HELP , I DON’T WANT TO DIE!” she scread, as the cloud of dust spread throughout Derelict Outpost and the sound of falling debris, Mada Luchie’s roars, and the Dullahan’s guttural shrieks echoed behind her.
Tristessa ran, cried, and kept running, fleeing in terror from Death. Fleeing from the dead ones, from her adversary, and from her ssage that had been etched into her soul.
“Face !” It was like a mockery of her cowardice. A mockery of her worthlessness that had just caused the deaths of good people. “Defeat !”
“I can’t, I can’t do it!” Tristessa cried. Fleeing down the northern highway, blindly in the darkness. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry! Forgive !”
The dead responded with silence, and the cowards with tears of sha.
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