“AAAAAAAHHHH!”

  Upon hearing that heart-wrenching scream, Astoria finally let herself fall. Collapsing to the ground, her armor taking on the role of a fishing weight sinking into the depths of the sea.

  “Tori, oh, Tori!” Tristessa didn't hesitate for a moment before kneeling beside her, placing both hands on either side of her head and feeling the warm moisture of the blood that was beginning to seep from her new wound. “Stay with me, please!”

  “…”

  There was no response. The blow to the head was taking effect, and Tristessa was ready to protect her from any retaliation from the She-Dragoon, whatever the cost.

  Retaliation that never came, as Aurelia had taken several steps back. The strike had caused internal and external damage in that bloody laceration, which Aurelia tried to cover with one hand.

  It was extremely difficult to tolerate the distribution of pulsing hellfire thought her naked chest; it could not withstand the imbalance caused by that gash from which crimson liquid life energy escaped. She clenched her teeth in a vain attempt to ease the merciless pain that fried every nerve connection in her body. She could barely hold her weapon, and her legs trembled, a sign that she was reaching a dangerous limit.

  “Ein Attractor Irit!”

  Elemental gravity thaumaturgy glyphs manifested around the woman, enclosing her within the created halo. She looked up at Severus, who was pointing both hands at her with a sadistic, self-satisfied smile.

  “Y-you damned elf…!” The glyphs collapsed, unleashing a torrent of pain within her. “AAAAARGH!”

  Every drop of blood coursing through the veins near her wound, every drop that trickled down her sides between the slashed skin and cut tissue, like a squeezed sponge, was subjected to the most powerful gravitational wells Severus could conjure. He crushed her in every direction, applying pressure to her wounds, especially the one on her chest, transforming that pressure gradient into a tool of torture.

  Though this extreme pain wasn't the elf's primary goal, it was merely a bonus. What he truly wanted was to leave Aurelia as still as a statue.

  “Now, Auron!”

  So that the weakened gunslinger could raise his revolvers, loaded with the last of his non-lethal bullets, and fired at his target without any margin for error.

  BANG. BANG. BANG.

  Every bullet struck Aurelia's bare, bruised torso. They hit the spaces between her ribs, her slightly marked abdominal muscles, near the critical wound. They left marks that would soon become bruises, multiplying her suffering and, simultaneously, the courage of someone willing to fall into the darkest void.

  “It's time to throw in the towel, lady!” the gunslinger pleaded when the last bullet hit his target in the shoulder with enough force to jolt her and replicating waves of fresh pain. “Lady Eramisaptor, please!”

  But the Lady of the Dominion had no intention of listening. Only to curse their names with hatred.

  “M-Malak Drakan… Ca…C-Casimir…!”

  The winds conjured by her Divinity began to concentrate around the glaive's blade. Pressure differences so extreme and localized that they seemed to distort its edge; a storm that became one with the weapon. Aurelia positioned herself despite Severus's gravity working against her, and raised the glaive above her right shoulder, with the pain she was still inflicting on herself being a hellish torture.

  She didn't care: she only wanted to show those two men that she wasn't going to fall so easily.

  "If you're going to attack me, let it be to kill!" she shouted, and made a horizontal slashing motion that unleashed a violent and concentrated tempest in the form of a gust of wind against them.

  It swept over Tristessa and Astoria, striking the two defenseless men and throwing them to the ground like rag dolls.

  “Nooo, Uncle Severus!”

  Lucahn's scream expressed what the gray-eyed girl had frozen in her vocal cords. She saw Auron's hat fall with the returning gales, near her two fallen allies. Motionless, Auron face down and Severus with his back to her.

  They weren't dead, but there was no way they were going to get up and keep fighting. Not them, not Astoria.

  Now she was truly alone on the battlefield. The thought was terrifying, and even more so was knowing that she had to defend her comrades' lives when, throughout all the loops, it had been the exact opposite.

  And she had to defend them from none other than that dangerous woman, even while covered in wounds, some more grievous than others, and with no more capacity to use her Divinity of Air Haste. Without the strength to hold her Twilight of the Hand of Terror, which slipped from her grasp and fell to the ground with a continuous clanging sound.

  “Ha...ha...” Aurelia sighed, breathing heavily, salivating with blood that accumulated inside her mouth nonstop, and taking short steps toward where Tristessa knelt beside the unconscious Astoria. She stared at them both with unwavering homicidal intent, seeking to extinguish their lives by any means necessary. “Ha...”

  “I won’t let you touch them,” Tristessa whispered, without a second thought and despite the fear within her clinging to the core of her being like a parasite. With her hunting dagger in hand, she went to meet her and assumed the fighting stance she had learned from Katriel Strauss. “Did you hear me, Aurelia?! I won’t let you hurt my friends anymore!”

  “F-friends?” she asked in disbelief, dragging both her voice and her feet on the ground. Tristessa tried to execute one of the moves she had practiced in her mind to deceive the enemy and hopefully land a thrust without causing serious damage, but her feint was so clumsy and amateurish that Aurelia saw it coming and easily intercepted her wrist. “You delusional fool!”

  Exhaustion and hatred, a mixture that cooled and heated at the same time, was what continued to give Aurelia the strength to squeeze Tristessa’s wrist and force her to drop her dagger. Then, she closed both hands around the girl's neck and dropped her full weight onto her, slamming Tristessa's back against the floor as the air was ripped from her lungs.

  “Hhhk!” Aurelia's bloodied fingers blocked her windpipe, the coppery smell filling her nostrils and making her eyes burn. Had she not been so weakened and resorting to her Essential Dilution, there was no doubt those fingers would have been able to pierce through muscles, arteries, and vertebrae as if they were made of plastic. Tristessa would already be dead. “Gh, kh!”

  “If you couldn't kill me...then how do you expect to keep all the promises you made?” Aurelia demanded, her words punctuated by grunts and ragged, labored breathing. The corners of her mouth twisted under the force she was using to extinguish Tristessa's life, as Tristessa tried to wrest those hands away. “Go on, do it! Kill me and have the chance to fulfill our dreams! Do it, or I'll kill you and everything will stay the same! Do you understand?! IF I LIVE, END-WORLD WILL HAVE NO FUTURE!”

  “…!”

  Even with the lack of oxygen slowly shutting down her brain, Tristessa heard that small slip of the tongue Aurelia uttered out of instinct.

  “Our dreams?” Aurelia hadn't realized that by saying that, she had ignited a fire of determination in Tristessa's eyes and given her the resolve to reject her challenge without hesitation. “YOU WILL LIVE, AURELIA!”

  Using the last few seconds of lucidity she had left before losing consciousness and dying, Tristessa tried to open the floodgates of the dark cold that connected her soul to the Abyss. The effort was titanic; it resisted the flow of energy, so little spiritual power was left to channel all the Discord that she wanted to get unleashed.

  “Please, I need your help! Let me summon you!” Darkness seeped in; the gate left ajar, yet it resisted. The Divinity of Nemesian Summoning sought to obey. Tristessa had to make one last effort as her lungs melted and her heart pumped blood with frantic speed, searching for oxygen that was nowhere to be found. “Please…!”

  “Cocytian Ex Mortus!”

  She heard Severus’s voice in the distance, and then a rush of heat pierced the darkness within her. It was spiritual energy that was not hers, going straight to the gates of the Abyss and throwing them open with such violence that the river of Discord burst forth. It gathered in every corner of Tristessa's infinite soul, cracking it and throbbing like a second heart.

  Her Divinity released a mighty and freezing road, all thanks to the final push she needed, coming from that man; that blood elf that she loved.

  “COME TO ME, DULLAHAN!”

  Shadows rose around Aurelia and Tristessa. A swirling darkness that brought the knightess in black armor and cloak with it, appearing behind the She-Dragoon. She went straight for her arms without wasting a second, grabbing both her wrists. Then she squeezed; the inhuman strength and pressure of the black steel phalanges forcing her hands open and releasing Tristessa's grip on her neck.

  "HAAAH!" The breath of cold air, delicious and rich in life, filled the girl's chest. It restored the use of her arms and legs, cleared her vision, and sharpened her mind as she coughed. “Subdue her!”

  “FUCKING SHIT! DO IT, IRANDELL!” Aurelia shrieked, struggling in vain against the Dullahan, who, under her summoner's command, forced the woman to her knees and twisted her arms behind her head. “TELL YOUR TIN BITCH TO RIP MY HEAD OFF, COME ON! DO IT, DAMN IT…!”

  But Tristessa didn't hear a word she said during the titanic effort she was making to stand. She knew she didn't have much time before whatever thaumaturgy the blood elf had done was over and her own Divinity would tear her soul to shreds so Endrel and her Consort could send her back in time once more.

  “GRAHK!”

  Blood and clots rose from the back of her throat and pooled in her mouth. There was no time left; it was a matter of seconds before she would feel that wave of unbearable pain again, the kind that could flay her sanity.

  Standing before the Lady of the Dominion, screaming without restraint, she had only one thing to say:

  “Aurelia.” The She-Dragoon fell silent at once, her eyes wide and bloodshot, waiting for what was about to happen. “I promise I will fulfill your dream too… But you must be alive to see it.”

  A conclusion to that duel to the Death that went against their agreement. A betrayal that Aurelia denounced with a roar to the heavens.

  “MAY ALL THE GODS CURSE YOU, TRISTESSA IRANDELL…!”

  “Knock her out.”

  In an instant, the Dullahan released Aurelia, grabbed her by the base of the neck, and punched her in the face. Her armored knuckles fractured teeth and most likely her right cheekbone. Tristessa only caught a glimpse of her violet eyes rolling back in her head for a fraction of a second before her head and the rest of her body hit the ground with a thud that shook the earth beneath her feet.

  Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.

  And then it was Tristessa's turn to fall.

  It was strange not to feel any pain in her left arm or hip from the contact with the dirty, bloodstained floor, nor from the inevitable blow to her head. The Dullahan had vanished along with the shadows, and facing her was Aurelia, unconscious, the side where she had been punched blackened and swollen.

  Her eyes were open, and thanks to the magical lighting of the courtyard, she could see her beautiful irises, almost eclipsed by her dilated pupils. She could also see the tears, the blood that continued to seep from each open wound on her body, and the grimace of profound despair that had been etched on her face before her consciousness faded to black.

  Perhaps all the fear and despair she had carried for years, ruling a Dominion tormented by the Shadow Queen's vassals, had finally surfaced, against her will.

  It was a possibility, Tristessa didn't know yet.

  “…but I’d like to ask her,” she thought, seeing that behind all that blood, the hatred and coldness that she had always seen tainting her countenance, Aurelia probably owned a very beautiful smile. “Someday…”

  In truth, she couldn’t hate her. Much less now that she knew she, too, wanted the help of a Stranger to achieve the impossible—even though her ego and her sense of justice wouldn’t allow her to admit it. To the point of wanting to lose her life for a chance to save the inhabitants of the Dominion.

  “Someday I’d like to see you truly smile.”

  With that thought, as sweet as honey and as light as a cloud in her consciousness, Tristessa fainted.

  Without having seen the Mercer-Archeos descend from the platform to go to the almost lucid Severus.

  “Severus! Sweet Xiliarra bless you all!”

  Jin embraced the only friend he had left in End-World; Tiara embraced them both, her iron will crumbling and tears she'd held since their escape from the Royal Hunters' House streaming down her face; and Lucahn joined them, sobbing, longing for the touch of the elf he adored as part of the family.

  Without having seen Auron crawling to where Astoria was still lying on the floor.

  “Hey, lady. Wake up, will you? Your kitten is over there; you can’t stay like this.”

  He patted her cheek to rouse her, pulling gauze and other first-aid supplies from his pockets; all while she muttered curses under her breath when she felt the alchemical ointment on the injury near her temple, but her ember-like eyes never leaving the gunslinger's amber gaze.

  Without having seen Jonas arrive with Vergil, who let out a mournful howl and lay down beside his dear owner.

  “Dear, oh dear! It seems like there’s a lot of work to do ahead.”

  The Advisor conjured enough healing glyphs to form a halo on the ground, enclosing both Aurelia and Tristessa within its circumference.

  Without having seen the painful reprive that crossed his face. Raising his gaze to dark and yet shiny heavens above. Calculating, looking beyond.

  “Another star in the darkest sky. I wonder… How long will it last this time?”

  IMPERIAL LORD DEFEATED

  DIVINITY OF THE DARK ROOM

  BLACK MIRROR – Stats after victory against Aurelia Eramisaptor - Updates in Yellow

  TRISTESSA IRANDELL

  MAIN STATS

  

  
• Strength: 5 out of 100


  
• Dexterity: 8(+3) out of 100


  
• Endurance: 7 out of 100


  
• Vitality: 7(+2) out of 100


  
• Intelligence: 8(+1) out of 100


  
• Spirit: 12 out of 100


  
• Willpower: 7(+3) out of 100


  
• Luck: 1 out of 100


  

  SUBSTATS

  

  
• Hit Points: 30(+5) out of 10000


  
• Magic Points: 4 out of 5000


  
• Spirit Points: 100(+15) out of 5000


  
• Stamina: 75 out of 5000


  
• Poise: 15 out of 1000


  
• Immunities: 8 out of 500


  
• Physical Resistance: 25 out of 500


  
• Magic Resistance: 20 out of 500


  
• Instant Death Resistance: 7(+3) out of 500


  
• Terror Resistance: 15(+3) out of 500


  
• Madness Resistance: 12 out of 500


  
• Karma: -15 points between [-100 and 100]


  

  PASSIVES

  

  
• First Echo of Viktor Enma: +3 Dexterity points. Bonus on daggers and knives.


  
• Second Echo of Viktor Enma: +2 Vitality points. Bonus on HP.


  
• Third Echo of Viktor Enma: +3 Willpower points. Bonus on Spirit Points, Terror Resistance and Instant Death Resistance.


  
• Fourth Echo of Viktor Enma: +3 Terror Resistance and Madness Resistance.


  
• First Echo of Katriel Strauss: +1 Intelligence point. Negative bonus on Karma.


  

  JOBS

  

  
• Necromancer – Practitioner of the dark arts, capable of bringing the dead back to life and force them to do their bidding.
  
    
  
  
    
  • Level 4 – Skills and passives defined by effectiveness of the [Divinity of Accursed Existence] and [Divinity of Whispers in the Dark].
  
  
    
  
  
    


  
• She-Dragoon - Warrior capable of fighting as a cavalryman or as infantry on foot. High mobility and effective in flanking and surprising enemy forces.
  
    
  
  
    
  • Level 1 - Skill: Aracross Riding
  
  
    
  
  
    


  
• Summoner – A conjurer that relies on the strength of entities bound to their will.
  
    
  
  
    
  • Level 1 – Skills and passives defined by effectiveness of the [Divinity of Nemesian Summoning].
  
  
    
  
  
    


  

  EQUIPMENT

  

  
• Casual Shirt: No damage negation bonuses


  
• Casual Trench Coat: No damage negation bonuses


  
• Casual Trousers: No damage negation bonuses


  
• Casual Boots: No damage negation bonuses


  
• Hunting Knife: +D physical damage bonus from Dexterity scaling


  

  DIVINITIES

  

  
• Death and Resurrection (Dark Resurrection) – Divinity of Death, granted by the God of Chaos, Vel'Moran. Banished from Death, there is no end to the abyss on the horizon. Dying is a straight line. Resurrecting is a spiral.


  


  
• Baptism in Ruins – HIDDEN BY UNNATURAL DARKNESS


  
• Gradient of Madness – The forbidden truth emanates from the overlapping of multiple realities. No sentient being can endure it. The logical result is madness. (Grants +9999 points of Madness-status effect to friends and foes alike after consciously learning about the [Divinity of Death and Resurrection])


  


  
• Accursed Existence – Divinity of Life, granted by the Goddess of Order, Xiliarra. Life is a gift, rejoicing in it is an obligation. Even for those who reopen their eyes and beg for oblivion.


  


  
• Arising Capacity: 1


  
• Soul Strain:


  


  
• 1 SP per second for Fading Souls – 5 SP per second to use a Divinity


  
• 5 SP per second for Lesser Souls


  
• Curse of the Evil Eye – From the Empyrean of Dead Gods, the Shadow Queen casts her malevolent gaze over Nekrom, wishing for an Age of Eternal Darkness where everything bends to her relentless will. (+1 point of Terror-status effect while a returned soul tainted with the malice of the Shadow Queen is active. Incremental in value the mightiest the soul to return.)


  


  
• Demiurgic Regression – Nekronomika created all living beings with the idea that eventually all of them shall return to their primal state of pure essence in the epilogue of the everything. She knew that the reverse process was possible, but such a void existence was something She did not desire for her children. (Recompose the body of a deceased in order to make it an acceptable receptacle for its broken soul.) – 10 SP per second + normal values of Soul Strain.


  


  

  

  
• Whispers in the Dark – Divinity of Power, granted by the God of Balance, Kantrus. It is said that the dead tell no tales. In truth, it is a matter of who is willing to listen.


  


  
• Harvested Echoes: 5


  
• Spiritual Resonance – A premonition of the other side, a message sent with the serenity of the grave. The dead fear oblivion. Show them that they are not forsaken.


  


  

  

  
• Dark Room – Divinity of the Mind, granted by the God of Balance, Kantrus. The mind can always be a darker place than one believes. Its corridors can be endless, a labyrinth capable of swallowing its owner alive, and no one will hear their screams.


  


  
• Room of Knowledge


  
• Room of Phantom Remembrances


  
• Negative Altar


  
• Projector Room


  
• Assistant’s Offce


  
• Black Mirror


  
• HIDDEN BY UNNAURAL DARKNESS


  


  

  

  
• Nemesian Summoning – Dual Divinity of Death and Power, granted by the Gods of Chaos and Balance, Vel’Moran and Kantrus. The perpetual cycle of Death and Rebirth is not without the incitement of imbalance upon the canvas of space and time. Once the soul finds the means to level the scales, once it finds the means to overcome hardships through persistence, transcendence is at hand.
  
    
  
  
    
  • [Phantom Divine]: Dullahan, the Dark Knightess.
    
      
    
    
      
    • Soul Strain: 25 SP per second
    
    
      
    
    
      
  
  
    
  
  
    


  

  TITLE – Lost

  “Still weak and fragile, chasing an inexistent speck of light within the infinite dark. Your allies see you as a tool, ready to discard you after use. Your enemies mock you at your attempts at survival. Even after some small victories, the weight of failure will bring you down into darkness and despair.”