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“Oh, terrible... terrible... ” Wilvur whispered somberly as the dying flutter of a mantle landed by his feet.

The lifeless body of a priestess had greeted them, limply falling beneath the cold, hard stone of the doorway, a large bloody rip in her white robes splattering a pool of crimson across the ground... the look of fear permanently etched into her unseeing stare.

“I suspect we’ll find more of her congregation the further delve deeper within,” Wilvur said grimly, stepping over the body and entering the parish. “Keep alert,” He then spoke in another hushed whisper. “If Remelda means to kill me, then her greatest opportunity lies in the element of surprise.”

Eshwlyn nodded, pressed her feet against the priestess robes, soiling it further, and quietly trailed along after him. The parish had a grandiose air about it, a vast lavish space, that even in its current ruinous state, she could still vaguely see the bearings of its former glory.

“Remelda, are you in here?” Wilvur began to echo. “Please, I wish only to settle things placatingly, if you would allow it.”

Candelabras lay strewn across the hall, and as a result, spilled wax had long hardened onto the wrinkled carpets. The draperies had fallen from their braces, ornaments and artifacts were common obstacles to look out for, and the narrow pews were sat scattered in various states of ruin.

.....

“I do not mean any harm to you, Remelda,” A convincing gentleness. “Come out, come along quietly, and I promise you will see that I speak only the truth.”

They shuffled along and true to his claims, they soon quickly discovered the rest of the parish members had shared the same grisly fate as the priestess outside.

“Oh, by the Divines...”

The many dead were sprinkled across the aisle, laying in a bloody mound of their own thick robes. Men, women, and children seeking refuge had too stained the sacred grounds with the stench of death and decay.

Wilvur combed the many nameless faces of his people, maintaining a vacant look that implied nothing, and speaking once more a calm tone that resounded even less, “Remelda, I understand if your regrettable actions are tempting you to keep hidden in deep reluctance. But you are not to blame for this, this is merely how you are inherently-come with me, and we will rectify this issue... prevent an incident such as this from ever happening again.”

On the far end, only the grand altar dedicated to the Divine Yuila remained untouched. Her shrine, her relics, any marking of her sanctity, still in pristine condition.

And that’s when she saw it.

A shadow slinking across the exposed narrow beams looming high above them, the slight sway of a chandelier previous unstirring, then from behind the ruptured wooding of an upturned desk... it landed.

“Remelda!” Wilvur unwittingly continued to call. “Currently, I’ve no influence over you and I am not your Master. Even with the use of Subjugation, which I do not intend to impose upon you is rendered null with myself alone. Truly-what more do you need convincing of? ”

Instincts immediately kicked in. She had lost her sense of smell, her sense of touch, but her ears, her eyes, despite the winter’s sickness constantly impeding her, they remained as sharp as ever. Her narrow ears twitched, hearing it, knowing it-the unsheathing of a weapon.

‘Protect’-The word boomed overpoweringly in her head, already emptying itself of all other thoughts to a complete utter focus.

But... should she?

“Remelda...”

Would things... perhaps be better... if she stayed her blade?

“Please listen.”

Do nothing?

“Just let me help you...”

Let him die?

“Let me save you.”

Let him die.

A flash of brightest silver streaked across the hall.

“Remel-”

“Master! Behind me now!”

Eshwlyn jumped forward, her blade withdrawn, and the very next second, the harshest, sharpest clangor pierced the deathly silence, ringing incessantly like the toll of a bell. Her knees buckled, her arms throbbed, quickly she reinforced the grip on her blade, and in that brief moment, that sudden struggle, all she saw, beyond the quivering edges of crossed swords, was the frightening void of the blackest eyes.

The very same shade of darkness as the Cleanser herself.

Then, as sudden as before, the pressure lifted, the sound of scurrying metal resounded, and the darkness before her vanished.

Stricken by impulse, Eshwlyn pushed an alarmed Wilvur to the side, sending him carenning onto the lengthy surface of a nearby pew, barely in time, just as a plunge of a blade sparked blasting fissures of chipped stone from where he once stood.

“DO NOT GET IN MY WAY!” Resounded a growl with such ferocity that Eshwlyn found herself momentarily stunned, and before she was even aware of it, she was lifted off her feet, sent hurling-the sharpest pain-and in an explosion of noise, she was staggering upright from a huge wreckage of splintered wood and concrete, and with her dazed sights, saw far across from her the gleam of a blade ready to plunge once more.

Without thinking, Eshwlyn sent the nearest upturned pew flying with a kick towards the assailant, forcing a distraction, an interruption, and with the distinct snap of cleaved wood, the pew was severed cleanly in two slamming hard into the walls-but Eshwlyn had already charged, already reached-and staring deep into the blackness once more, she forced another cross of swords, a stalemate of mounting pressure, of piercing stares.

And indeed, with her blurred vision gradually clearing, Eshwlyn finally saw more than just the deep black in her opponent’s glare. Clad in silver armor, with long disheveled locks flowing like a rapid of inky black, with only the slightest jut of pointed ears poking from the frazzled seams, Remelda exuded a desperation, a rage, in her strained expression, that felt only all too familiar.

“Remelda, cease this at once!” Wilvur had gotten to his feet, whirling around behind Eshwlyn’s guard, keeping a fair distance away from the skirmish. “What you are doing is foolish! You know this!”

“Foolish?!” Remelda’s gaze veered to the side, snapping her frantic eyes towards him, the hatred brimming within only intensifying. “Freedom’s foolish? To finally serve myself and only myself-you dare mock it?!”

“You are a Knight!” Wilvur snapped back with equal intensity. “Without the bond of a Master, the only freedom you are allowed is in the cold embrace of the Lady Enstar! There can be no other!”

“So you say!” She growled, and momentarily, Eshwlyn sensed a danger rising higher. “But you will see, you will know-here, now-I will prove you wrong!”

In a blink, Remelda forced their blades apart, instantly striking, slashing, in a rapid flurry of movements seemingly impossible. Eshwlyn deflected one, dodged another, but the third nicked her skin, and the fourth sliced open her shoulder-then a familiar pain rippled through her body, and she was lifted once more off the ground, only higher, only faster.

Another explosion of sound as she broke cleanly through the layers upon layers of stone ceiling, landing hard in a thick cloud of dust and debris on the landing of the highest floor. The agony she was in escaped her lips in thick spews of blood and mucus, rising back upright on her feet, and spared only a second’s reprieve, before a blur of bright silver streaked through the ruptured hole on the ground after her.

“And you!” came a harsh snarl. “The distraction! I shall take care of you first! I wish to relish the time I’ll spend killing him slowly... so there can be no interruptions. Not especially from you!” Remelda marched forward, and promptly began assaulting Eshwlyn with another relentless barrage of blows.

More bodies littered the flooring of their arena, and Eshwlyn struggled to gain a footing, slipping against bloodied robes, twice tripping onto piles of corpses.

Remelda saw her chance, thrusting her blade forward onto the ground, but the impaired Elf quickly reacted-grabbing and driving forward a huge man’s burly decaying flesh to meet the blade instead-and the tip of the sword only missed her by mere inches, stained deeply in a gleaming, dripped red.

Seeing her chance, Eshwlyn scrambled back up to her feet, and the violent, visceral waltz of swords commenced once more.

“Why? Why?! Why do you fight for him?!” growled Remelda between strikes. “He does not care for you! He only means to use you! Use us all! You know this! I know you know this! So why? Why couldn’t you have just stepped aside?!”

Heaving, blinding pain pulsating across every inch of her body, Eshwlyn found herself speaking without thinking, “I must! I’ve no choice! My sister, he-! Argh, you need not understand my reasons!”

“So you’ve resisted then, you’ve fought before! His pain could not defeat you!” a flash of bright sparks, and briefly their blades once again, comprehension gleaming in her blackened gaze. “But then, what-a sister? Leverage? And you adhere to him now, you bow to his whims, for something as flimsy as that?!”

“I said you need not understand it!”

“And I don’t!” a shout, a shove, and Eshwlyn staggered back “You will allow him to enslave all of our kind for the meager chance at life for a single one?! Stand your ground, you defend him now! For that?! You will not let me end this suffering awaiting hundreds of us because of such a selfish, stupid reason as your own?!”

They clashed again, and Eshwlyn felt her strength waver.

“We are no different!” She rebutted, deflecting a powerful strike into a wall that shook the foundations and rippled the shatter of the large-tinted windows surrounding them. “Look around you, the bodies you have amassed! And you wonder why the humans fear-”

“They deserve it and you know no different!” Remelda roared, swerving a whistling slice that caught only the ends of her silver hair as Eshwlyn lunged back. “Look at me! The torture I went through! The agony of the conversion! All that suffering I underwent-for what?! To arrive here? To protect the very same people that wish death upon me every night?! That pester me, that revile me... that hold no regard whatsoever if I had to sleep on the frozen earth every night?! And what were their prerequisites for acquiring me? Why me, out of a hundred other Knights?!”

Eshwlyn evaded again, in time to avoid the complete disintegration of the ground beneath her. Another gaping hole in the ground, another fog of dust and dirt, and swirling amidst the white mist, harbored an indescribable hatred flurrying in those pitch-black eyes.

“Because I bear a close resemblance to the Cleanser herself!” She answered herself, followed after by a strange derisive cackle. “That is why I’m here! Why I was made their protector, their Knight-for they see their merciful Yuila in my eyes, my face, the color of my hair! It’s the only way they can even stand to look at me!”

The cloud of dust instantly dissipated as Remelda quickly dashed forward, another shrill clangor, another blinding spark, as blades met, both slowly creeping to the edge of an open window.

“Tell me, is this justice? Is this all worth it?!” She demanded. “This kind of prejudice, oppression for all of our kind?! For your sister, for this future, you will continue to fight?!”

Eshwlyn was spared an answer by a rapidly emerging clatter of footsteps up a stairwell. The next moment, Wilvur was there, panting hard and approaching fast.

“Remelda, listen to reason!” He said, still keeping a fair distance back. “You strike me down now, do you believe I would be the last? There will be more, they will be worse-and they will not show you the same mercy as I am.”

A silence of grunts, of clattering iron, the air brimming with intensity, with flakes of snow blowing in from the open windows.

“Come back with us to the encampment,” Wilvur continued to implore, his commanding voice louder than all. “There we will be able to mend you. The hatred you are feeling now, this killing instinct-it will be subdued once more. Under obedience, under the influence of a Master, you will be normal again.”

“Listen to him-listen to his words!” Remelda fumed. “Do you even hear what he’s saying about us?! About you?!” Then, she leaned in further, her look of loathing looming at her between swords. “And what of your sister? What is she to think of this?! To think of you?!”

“I don’t... CARE!” Eshwlyn yelled back, and without thought, a peculiar strength rousing in her body, her arm lunged around her suit of armor, and with another roar of utter defiance, she tossed the both of them over the edge of the window.

Spinning, twisting, flailing, a violent freefall that had them spiraling as one, in the frantic struggle, Remelda attempted to plunge her sword deep into her, but at the last second, Eshwlyn mustered all remaining strength, kicking free, separating them both far apart... before inevitably plunging down onto the soft snow below.

The world seemed to not want to stop spinning, and her body seemed to have stopped listening. Exhaustion, fatigue, sickness, it finally had bested her. The winter snow falling before her eyes, the vast gray sky above, seemed to be her final undoing.

Unable to move, any moment now, she expected to hear the clunk of shuffling metal, hear the heaving satisfied breathing of victory above her, a fleeting glimpse of black, before the tip of her blade plunge her world instantly into eternal darkness.

But it did not come.

Instead, there was a warmth.

A dribbling warmth.

Trying again, Eshwlyn managed to twist herself around, and a spatter of blood spewed out from her now crimson-stained hair. But if it was not hers. Then whose could it...?

She spotted Remelda from afar, still falling, forever falling, suspended mid-air by the once pristine statue of Yuila, now fragmented upon impact and shaped into the crystalized spear that now deeply skewered and held the squirming, writhing Knight up into the vast wintry skies.

The sight of it, somehow it had made her briefly forget about all her ailments, and Eshwlyn slowly staggered forward, following the growing trail of blood until she was met with the inverted, unfocused gaze of Remelda’s.

And within them was not anger, not hatred, nor even resentment-just relief, at ease... and absence of her glares and scorn, for once, she could almost see the Yuila’s kindness reflecting in her deep black.

Then they blinked, staring at her, still recognizant-still aware. At once, Eshwlyn felt an unknown impulse spurring her to speak, to say anything, something.

So she did, slurring, swaying. “I’m... I am truly sorry...”

“You... apologize to me... why...?” Eshwlyn managed to catch her say through frail wheezes and a mouthful of blood. “I am... free now... I have... what I’ve wanted for... all along... haven’t I...? I want this... freedom... any freedom...”

“My sister is, I-I love her, and I...” Eshwlyn continued to say wondering why she even was, why she felt this compulsion to justify, to explain, even if she knew come any moment now, it wouldn’t matter either way. “Lenora, I do not know where she is, I do not know how she is, I must know, but above all, she is undeserving of this fate! Serving him, following him... it is the only way I know how to save her.”

.....

“Then... I suppose... it is her that you... will have to give your apologies...” Remelda hacked, a final blink extinguishing the dim shimmer of life still left in her eyes, and a raspy breath parting her of her final words. “For you will surely... doom her too...”