With nowhere comfortable to sit among so many piles of broken bricks and dusty debris and wood, Tristessa settled for the floor. She leaned against the side wall of the workshop, where she had seen the dead rcenary's shadow pass. Far from the supernatural influence of the thaumaturgical barrier, she crossed her arms and made herself as comfortable as possible.
“Viktor... I hope you know that I will rember you,” she thought, for a man she had never t, and offended by the cruelty of fate that had led him to leave echoes of himself in the material world, fearing oblivion knowing that before him lay nothing but his own doom. “I know so much more about him now. A lot more about Severus... While he has no idea who I am, I already feel that he is soone important to .”
Sighing, she knew she would never be able to shake off the emptiness she felt in her chest, between her heart and the mark that ca from all her Deaths and Resurrections. She had no idea how long it would take the blood elf to return from the north side of the city. And now that she had found the place she was supposed to accompany him to in a previous tiline, she wasn't going to risk going out in search of him and getting lost.
“I've done everything in my power. Now all I can do is wait and pray it's not too late...” she thought, her gaze fixed on the panorama before her.
Wastelands with grasslands that also housed tons of non-organic garbage, humble houses ahead, and, in the distance and impossible to miss, the Evil-Warding Pillar.
"...I wonder if I couldn't have done it better.”
She said that out loud, and with weakness. She couldn't forget the rchant and her rcenaries killed by the Dullahan. She couldn't forget the thaumaturge lian being devoured by palkuriae. And she couldn't forget those bandits who plundered the caravan's riches and consequently also t their end at the city's southern entrance.
She couldn't forget, nor ignore, that she was responsible for all those Deaths that had occurred in her quest to reach Entrana. Her selfish heart reminded her of this, pumping guilt in its purest form, contaminating every drop of blood that reached the ends of her body.
How could she have changed those outcos? How could she have made it to Entrana without anyone dying?
“By killing the Dullahan... Or die trying.”
Saying it was easy enough. As was pretending she herself hadn't fled in terror while her Nesis challenged her.
Empty words and no action at all. The way a coward like her handled herself.
“Yes... I am a coward,” she said, with no one around to hear her, and feeling strangely liberated. “But what the hell do they expect to do against that Dullahan? She killed five rcenaries like they were insects… And she probably also killed Mada Luchie after that…that transformation into a beast. What can I do where others have failed?”
It was tragicomic. Laughing to keep from crying, knowing her fate was practically sealed by nightfall. She had escaped the Dullahan twice… But for how much longer? Was she going to keep escaping until she t her inevitable fifth Death and started the loop all over again?
How could she save the rcer-Archeos family if not even she could save herself, with that phantom dark knightess on her heels every ti night and darkness reigned?
It was a fate worse than hell itself, bestowed upon her by the Three Gods who had blessed her with this dood existence and Divinities she must hide for the good of everyone and herself.
“The Gods keep laughing at … I have all these supernatural abilities, and yet I see no way to defeat the Dullahan with them. So many skills, and yet I feel so powerless…”
Tristessa stared at her hands in utter frustration and reviewed what she learned from Master Caius about her Divinities, with one particular, deadly exception that she kept hidden from him.
“[Death and Resurrection] will summon Endrel and Margules to drag back to the beginning of the loop. Will I have to die hundreds upon thousands of tis until I find a way to erge victorious?”
“[Whispers in the Dark] lets inherit the experience of the dead with whom I managed to build so form of connection, but in the end, I have no idea how it works. I don't feel capable of wielding a dagger like Viktor Enma…”
“[Accursed Existence] is a double-edged sword, Caius already said so. How long will I last standing without the strain tearing my soul to pieces? And how many people will have to die for to use them as puppets to fight the Dullahan, without even considering the possibility that they may turn against ? It's… it's so ssed up, so disgusting…”
She shook her head, her frustration causing her to cover her face with both hands. With her palms pressed against her closed eyes, Tristessa saw only absolute darkness.
“Darkness…” That word, repeated in the confines of her mind, made her rember one thing: there was a Divinity she had yet to discover on her own. “The Dark Room… The [Mind Palace]!”
Master Caius had told her it was a Divinity that created a place within her mind to organize her mories, knowledge, information… It was the perfect place for her, given her current situation.
Not to deal with the Dullahan, but with that other problem that seed to have been left aside given the circumstances: her identity, her forgotten life back on Earth.
Her past hidden in the shadows of the sea of mories, unnavigable and without a beacon to guide her to avoid colliding with sothing fatal and terrifying…
“I have nothing to lose by trying to use this Divinity I didn't know I had,” she thought. “An empty space… A place I must define on my own…”
Without removing her hands from her face, she focused on that hidden Divinity. With all that lack of light, soon the only external stimulus coming in the form of the sound of the wind and the chirping of birds, all banished.
And thus, her [Divinity of the Dark Room] made itself manifest.
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