"What?...please…" A powerful shot rang in the rain. Alessia swayed on her feet, feeling extremely light, for a split second she believed she had died. She fell to her knees as silent tears roll down her dirty cheeks. Suddenly Joan is here. Suddenly she is being dragged away. Her ears are ringing, she can't see, she feels like she is in a tunnel, the world feels darker than it should be.

Joan leaves the young woman away from the conflict, shaking and silent, deathly pale. At the opposite of her usual self. Joan tries to reload his gun and struggles to put the rounds in the chamber, both from his own shaking and from his blurry vision. He knew he shouldn't have thrown his glasses away. While he struggles Alexis finally overcome the one-armed enemy he was facing. He slowly turns to the two left. They stare at each other unsure of what the next step should be. Finally Joan manage to reload the gun.

The cold finally register in his brain, his teeth clack against each other, he is shaking so much more than before. Alexis is still far from the two foes, he should be able to make the shot, at least, at this distance, he can see clearly. He rises the gun and shoot. The recoils almost make him smack himself in the face, he stumbles a little before looking up.

One of them is still standing, the other is laying on the ground, his head is nowhere to be seen or perhaps everywhere. The last fighter, realizing that he was not going to win this fight and having somehow lost his weapon, raised his hand to his head. Alexis rushed toward him.

"I surrender! Please!" the foe shouts, Alexis stops a handful of steps away and point his blade to the throat of the other.

"Who sent you! Who do you work for!" He also shout.

"The mistress sends us !" Joan comes closer, the skin of that man he now see, is almost translucent, he can see with disturbing clarity his blood vessels in greens and purples.

"Who is this mistress and why does she wants to kill us?" He ask with calm, a stark difference from Alexis' tone. He is also closer than the driver to their prisoner.

"She is…I...I can't…She…!"He starts coughing, water it seems, almost like he is drowning. He hiccups and tries to grab Joan wrist before he falls to the ground, dead. His eyes rolled back into his skull, water still flowing out of his mouth.

Disturbed, disgusted and terrified, Joan stays frozen in place unable to look away from the body while Alexis turns around averting his eyes. He almost throw up but manage to keep it in, in shaking breaths he tap Joan on the shoulder and goes back to Alessia. This time, the man lays dead, for good. Slowly, Joan steps away, and goes back to his companions. Alessia has stopped crying, but she still sits in the mud.

"Did you…did you get any informations?" She ask, her voice hoarse.

"He said that a Mistress had sent them to kill us, but when I asked more question he…"

"He drowned." said Alexis plainly, as if it was a normal occurrence to drown in a place without even a pond.

"The one that almost shot me, thank you by the way...Said the same thing 'The mistress sends her regards" I didn't even registered that back then…"

"I won't blame you" Alexis sat next to her

"I can't really remember if I angered a woman enough once to warrant my execution like that" said Joan "For the record" he added. Alessia had a smile, almost as bright as they used to be.

The rain had lightened, they all fell silent, trying to catch their breath, literally and figuratively. Gathering themselves until they felt strong enough to utter another word. It was Alessia who finally broke the silence. When the sun finally came out of the clouds. Joan reload his gun still doubting that the fighters were really dead. Alessia looked above bathing in the warm rays of the suns before finally speaking.

"It's not what I expected, I mean, if we won, why do I feel so bad?" She was idly fidgeting with the hems of her skirt, dirtying her hands more. "I was always told that after defeating a foe you feel overwhelmed with pride or something…I only feel disgusted."

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"I suppose that is just how every survivors feels. We didn't want to fight, we almost died, we are tired beyond description. Violence is not supposed to feel good. Physically and mentally we are exhausted."

"And emotionally" said Alessia. The sun warmth began to comfort her, she found it's light reassuring.

"We should bury them, they still deserved a proper grave, no matter who or what they were." Alexis said. "Moreover, they came back once, so we shouldn't take chances."

"You're right." Joan looks back at the corpses. "You two stay here while I'll go retrieve a shovel"

"No. I'll help you" The girl and the man said at the same time. Joan understood that he wouldn't be able to change their mind so he simply nodded. Alessia went to retrieve her excavation tools she had of course packed for the trip, practically the only thing she had thought off without needing a reminder from her friends or from Tesla.

'It's not the tool that makes the task holy,' Joan told himself as he was digging, 'It's the way you do it, as long as the corpses are treated with respect, their soul will have no reason to hold on to their body.' They reunited the heads with their bodies but those whose head had exploded where simply lowered down into the holes as is. They lacked white fabric to envelop the bodies or flowers but Alessia spared some coins to let them hold on to. Like that they would be able to pass through the dangerous waters, toward the horizon, toward the land of the death, because they could pay the ferryman. Maybe they should've burned the corpses, but they didn't want to stay in the same place for too long.

The horses had gotten frightened from the whole ordeal but appeared unharmed. Alexis was relieved. Once they were done with the burials they got to work on the carriage, it was still bogged down. Further away, down the road they found a nice turn where there is enough space to stop for the night.However, none of them is in the mood to cook or eat so instead they just force themselves to eat some dry fruits and nuts.

"Phenomenal shot by the way Joan!" Alexis says seemingly out of nowhere as they get ready to leave the next morning.

"What?" Joan is confused.

"The last shot you made yesterday, that was wow! You even managed to disarm the first fighter!"

"I...I was targeting his head…"

"Oh"

"Yeah..." Alessia chuckled as Joan blushed in embarrassement.

"The most important is that you didn't waste a bullet." Said Alexis before starting the carriage, the day was clearer than yesterday. It looked like a good omen. They prayed it was. Maybe they didn't start as believers but seing people come back to life had shaken their former beliefs. Gods and goddesses didn't seem as far fetched now.

Alexis whistled tranquilly, guiding his horses calmly as the road was still pretty damp and muddy, they were quite slow. Joan, who had gone back inside with Alessia at the end of his awkward discussion with their driver, found that working silently on an history paper didn't have the same soothing quality it once held. Maybe he was unable to move on because he was not adressing the real problem. He would probably adress it if he knew what it was. But he didn't. He was frustrated by his situation, Alessia could see it. She was looking at him, concerned and idly fidgeting with the hems of her shirt.

"I won't ask what's on your mind…"She began.

"But?"

"But I will ask you if you can lend me one of your trousers. I can't fight in a skirt and much less in a dress, Tesla convinced me not to pack trousers of my own saying that I wouldn't assist the excavation and henceforth didn't need to. Yet I still took my tools so I suppose I really am just absentminded."

"He can be…old-fashioned." Alessia scoffed. "I'll happily lend you one of mine if it fits."

"At this point anything is better than what I have."

"I will not be one to disagree with you. I can't begin to imagine how hard it must have been to fight in that skirt while drenched to the bone. It was already hard for me…"

He said all that while rummaging through the many bags they had inside. Alexis had advised to keep them inside as they were most likely entering the region's rain season. He finally found two different pair that were most likely to fit the student.

"I also have one spare belt and pair of suspender I can lend you if needed, it should do the trick."

"I cannot thank you enough !" She took the clothes with a thankful smile.

"If they both fit then keep both, you might need a spare dry pair for days with heavy rains like yesterday."

"You're right! Thank you so much!"

Alessia would change into the first pair, using the belt to keep it in place, later that day, after they had stopped for the night. Alexis spent the evening in silence writing on a piece of letter paper with a gloomy face, yet, once done with his mysterious task, he had a sad smile. He put the letter into an envelope and sealed it. He looked at his companions from where he sat, Alessia was sharpening her blade while Joan was stirring soup in the pot over the fire. None of them were paying him any attention right now, so he sneaked to the carriage and secretly slipped the sealed envelope in Joan's jacket pocket.

"Who is up for a round of cards?" He asked cheerfully once he was back.