It was an ornate room they stumbled into, tall with vaulted ceilings and pews carved out of the same pale marble as the furniture in Red’s room. Before them was an altar, illuminated by a sharply cut circle of light, and beyond were the dim silhouettes of spider shaped statues stretching off into a seemingly endless space.

More immediately relevant though was that Red was wearing completely different clothes.

She swore when she realized it, grabbing unhappily at the fabric of the pure white gown. Webbed designs decorated its skirt, fraying into delicate edges of lace that trailed onto the floor, and a crown sat upon her garish mess of untamed purple hair, beaten metal woven into elegantly thin spires and set with moonstones.

Strangely, even though there were places where the garment should reveal flesh — the bare swath of her shoulders, the transparent edges of her sleeves, and the bits of her hands before they tapered off into jeweled, silver claws — Sláine couldn’t really… focus on the woman’s skin. It was like her eyes kept slipping away, or like something was interrupting that electrical signal between seeing and processing in her brain, leaving her unable to analyze what was before her, much less put words to it.

Red was still wearing the mask though, and she put a palm against its curve, as if to reassure herself of its presence. Had she… gotten a bit shorter?

How strange.

“Well, that sure is a… look,” Sláine commented, watching Red pry the jeweled claw ornaments off her hand and spike them onto ground, then left her to her fuming. “[ Threat Detection ],” she muttered again.

This one was more eventful — she felt something prickle along the back of her neck, an unsettling chill letting her know that something was off, something was wrong. She found her attention drawn to the edges of the room, and squinting, she thought she could see the vaguest of shapes lurking there in the dark. And straight across from them, somewhere in the inky pitch, was something… worse, something that raised the hairs on her arms and made the muscles in her arms tense.

It was coming closer. Listening carefully, she could hear the steady tap-tap-tap rhythm of footsteps.

Drawing closer to her companion and touching her lightly by the elbow, she said, "Red, there's something there."

"Yeah,” Red mumbled, “...Makes sense."

Sláine was all for charging in, but Red held her back with a simple gesture of 'wait'. With her other hand, she summoned a cube, and was just about to chuck it when a sudden pair of voices stopped her short.

"Princess! We brought a present for you~!"

"...Who's this, my lady?"

Something about the voices made Red’s body go stiff; she stared straight forward and let her fist drop to the side. Roughly, Sláine grabbed her arm and hissed, "Red, it's just an illusion. Don’t let it get to you!"

"I — I — ugh."

Two figures stepped into the light, both white haired and both with dusky, greyish skin. The light made their red eyes sparkle like chunks of carnelian, and strange markings adorned each of their faces, but that was where the similarities between the two ended.

The right had more masculine features and a bright, proud smile that showed off his precariously sharp teeth. He had long ears, pointed like an elf’s and weighed down by a pair of red earrings hanging from their tips, and he wore finely woven white robes, similar in style to Red’s but with far less elaborate detailing. His skin was lighter than his companion's, with speckled bits of brown around his mouth and cheeks, and he was shorter as well, with closely cropped hair and a smaller nose.

The left was tall, her willowy figure accented by pitch-black, tightly fitted leather armor. Her hair was long but bound so strictly into a braid that there was no possible way any stray strand of it could escape, and emblazoned on her dark forehead was a bright crimson shape that reminded Sláine of an hourglass. She had much shorter ears, still pointed but only just barely, and she did not smile, a severe, stalwart glower firmly affixed to her face as if daring someone to try and make her laugh.

Between them, they each had a hand on a shackled man’s elbows, also white-haired (like seemingly everyone else in this place) and with a similar grey hue to him, but he had no markings to speak of, and deep, dark purple eyes with no whites. He was handsome, but something about the sheepish, awkward way he smiled instinctively gave Sláine the impression that his good looks were wasted on him.

“Well, this is a bit unfortunate," he said, and just as they stepped into the light, there was a sudden gasp from Red as she doubled over in pain, a hand clutched tightly at her chest.

Leaping to the immediate assumption that correlation did indeed imply causation, Sláine fluidly thrust her halberd forward, intent on skewering the threat on the right, the one with the easy, unguarded demeanor.

It happened in a flash, a glint of metal arcing from the left and shoving the weapon aside before it could meet flesh. The white-haired woman's expression shifted into gritted determination, a stormy fury darkening her red eyes as, suddenly, she was armed, a short sword in one hand and a finely honed dagger in the other.

"Lycosidae! Protect the the Princess!" She ordered, then launched herself at Sláine.

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She was fast, terribly fast, and the woman was clearly unaffected by the darkness clouding most of the battleground, while Sláine was limited to the circular area of light. Sláine stepped backwards, back bumping into the altar, and kept her at bay with a jab from her halberd. Red was still gasping, as if unable to catch her breath, and after delivering an upwards cut towards the woman, pushing her back, Sláine slammed her partner back behind her with a jab from her elbow.

Wait, where had the man gone — ?

"Sorry, my lady!" Sláine heard from behind her, and even though she immediately whirled towards the direction of the voice, she wasn’t fast enough. He — Lycosidae, he'd been called — had grabbed onto Red, yanking her backwards towards the darkness. She stumbled after him, body half twisted and a hand reached out as she screamed her name.

"Sláine!"

Not caring how open it left her, Sláine threw her arm towards Red and grabbed onto her wrist, heaving her weight backwards. She felt pain blossom across her side, blood splattering over the ground as a sword lodged itself into Sláine's torso.

Flowers bloomed immediately from the wound, bursts of petals framing the wicked metal. Sláine ignored it, along with the dagger carving itself into her back, her attention entirely focused on Red.

"Teleport!" Sláine begged, desperate, but all Red could offer back to her was...

"I can't!"

And then the image of Red disintegrated, breaking apart before her in smoky segments that wove through Sláine’s outstretched fingers and vanished into the light.

Both Red and Lycosidae were gone.

The woman was still stabbing her, over and over again. Sláine allowed her to for a moment, staring at the place where Red had once been.

Then she whirled around and punched her.

Caught off guard, the woman stumbled back, and Sláine followed up by throwing her shoulder into her before reclaiming the advantage of distance her halberd afforded. Around her, she could hear... something, lots of somethings, and one of those somethings hissed as it sprinted out of the dark.

It was a long figure, tall like it'd been stretched out like taffy with multi-joined, stick-thin legs and an uneven number of arms on its body. Fangs arced over what could generously be called a mouth, and it had fur all over it, coarse and brown and covering its misshapen form. Sláine whirled, severing it with a mighty hack at its torso, and a crack split the air.

…Sláine was pissed.

What had they done with her? Was that the same kind of magic Red had? Why could HE teleport other people but Red couldn't? Why had Red stopped, why hadn't she blown up these fake images produced by a thing that was trying quite specifically to hurt her? Why had she hesitated? What had happened?

Was she okay?

Whatever had happened to her —

She better not die.

More silhouettes wavered at the edges of Sláine's vision, more than she could count, but not in such overwhelming quantities that [ Threat Detection ] wasn't able to give her a sense of how many were behind her. Four, she thought, maybe five individual presences charging in.

In tandem, that woman attacked, weaving through the long-limbed things and slashing at Sláine's abdomen. She blocked it with the pole of her halberd, then thought a sequence of words that functioned as both a prayer and a command.

Suddenly, there was relief as all the broken fragments of her world slotted into place.

[ Battle Fury ].

The axe-head sliced into her opponent’s arm as Sláine yanked backwards, and smoothly she shifted into an arc as the [ Reckless Spin ] took control. Flesh parted around her like sliced peaches, spilling thick black globules of ichor onto the ground. They could still move even when she'd cut their limbs off, Sláine noted, one of those monstrous heads piercing through the leather of her boot and pressing fangs into her ankle.

The spear of her halberd split its skull like a cantaloupe, and ignoring the tingle rising up her calf, she hacked, carved, slashed, cut, [ Reckless Spin ], [ Reckless Spin ], slitting apart bodies in a calm, steady rhythm.

Things she didn't understand personally offended her, because maybe if she'd been born a bit differently, she could understand them. If it hadn't been for a single quirk of fate, Sláine wouldn't have had to hollow herself out, scooping up all the bits of her that didn't match with the ferocious warrior archetype that she'd been forced into and leaving her a shallow facsimile of the person she'd used to dream of being.

If she'd had a bit more to her, Sláine thought, then maybe she could have been happy, and none of this would be happening.

She stabbed the most person-shaped of the lot, red staining her black armor and matching that sigil marking her forehead, then shoved her against the altar with the weight of another lunge. Something grabbed onto her, auroras of pain registering in twin points on her shoulder, but the woman before was fast and, now that she had her pinned like an insect in a glass box, she wanted to take full advantage of the opportunity.

Blood spurted from her mouth when Sláine rammed her against the stone, and honestly, the expression on her face was a bit funny.

When Sláine pulled back, the body slumping to the floor and its head dipping forward, she slammed her knee upward, trying to dislodge that long-limbed creature gripping onto her with its bony fingers. She could hear her shoulder crunch underneath the pressure of its teeth, and she made its torso crack in a chorus of snapping bones and splitting exoskeleton by stowing her weapon away in her [ Inventory ] and punching it, over and over again, with both fists before it finally released her and she could finish it off with an upwards-cut from her newly retrieved weapon.

Slick fluid dripped down its legs and, finally, it fell.

"Latrodecus!" She heard someone scream, a sound layered with equal parts horror and agony, and it was the voice of that man, that Lycosidae fellow that had been so annoying earlier while kidnapping her fucking partner, and Sláine casually slammed the axe-head into his neck and painted his white garments a shade that matched the body of the person he was so desperately crying over.

It only occurred to her afterwords that she'd no idea where he'd come from, hadn't heard him or seen him after he'd pulled his disappearing act earlier, but it didn't matter, really, and Sláine didn't stop carving into him until he gave up and quit moving.

…And then, finally, it was over, and solemn silence reigned over the blood-stained chapel.

Except, she knew there still was one living creature in the room still, she could hear very quick flutters of its panicked, gasping breathing. Slowly, purposefully, she rounded the altar, hearing the plish of blood being speckled across the white stone as she stepped in a puddle.

Staring down at the prisoner, Sláine solemnly pointed her weapon at the single living being still left in the room, the point of its spear hovering an inch above his exposed throat.

Strange.

Why didn't she feel the urge to kill him? Was it because he was shackled like a prisoner?

[ No more opponents detected. Battle Fury ended. ]

…No. It was something more than that.

Something in her gut was telling her, don’t kill this person, but why the hell would she care about the safety of something that she highly doubted was even alive?

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