"Close that wound up. As for that kid... I'll have to incapacitate her first. We need to stop her from using her Aegis if we want to capture her."

Lenora spun her guisarme and threw it into the air. She stretched her arm upward, and at the same time, the guisarme let out a momentary sound similar to a bee rapidly beating her wings.

Glittering light of gold orbited the weapon.

With a few gestures from Lenora, the light disappeared and the guisarme dived towards me in an arc. It veered away when the crimson wolf's head bit, to avoid my Aegis. While the speed alone could catch me off guard, it wasn't enough.

The crimson wolf's head growled and it shifted form into a large shield—just in time to protect me from the guisarme's head-on thrust. The guisarme bounced off the shield and spun in the air, before it returned to Lenora.

"...She clearly knows how to use her Aegis, with how she's deflecting every single strike. But at the same time, it doesn't seem she's controlling it herself? Quite different from what the Sigrdrifa said about them," said Lenora softly, as if she was testing her hypothesis through her weapon.

"That kid's strange. Her Aegis is not exactly like what Sigrdrifa had described," said Yarilya as she bandaged her severed arm with a white cloth. "Is she a new one?"

"Who knows? it's not like I'd ever met any of those monsters anyway. Once we take her to the Sigrdrifa, she'll bring the kid to the A.U themselves for them to identify."

Lenora lowered her body and took a defensive stance—her guisarme pointing at me.

"Hmph!" After a forward thrust, the guisarme left her hands, followed by a blinding flash from the hooked tip. While I covered my eyes from the flash, I heard scratching sounds presumably from the guisarme clashing against my shield.

I opened my eyes, and immediately let out a yelp when the teenage girl Lenora was in front of me. She palmed straight for my neck and once it connected, I could feel the air sucked out of my chest.

My esophagus broke from the attack. Unable to breathe, darkness enveloped me and I fell unconscious.

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"......Ugh."

My vision returned slowly as I stood up. Squelching and scratching noise grew louder and rattled at my ears—conspicuously raucous.

"Huh?" Taking in the scene unfolding before me, Lenora was fighting for her life against my Aegis, dodging and countering the five elongating crimson axes with her guisarme. Lenora jumped and twisted her body to avoid one, and parried another trying to pierce her shoulder.

Sparks flew each time the girl thrust and swung her guisarme, and not once had she managed to harm me through it. She gritted her teeth and hollered when she had to distance herself, cornered.

"Yarilya! Are you ready yet!?" yelled Lenora.

"Yeah..." Yarilya walked to her comrade's side with a strut. Her eyes cast a quick glance at her bandaged arm—what was left of it. "I'll put her down. You know what to do next."

"Don't mind if I go first. I'm itching to cut that kid. Looking at her miffed me, Yarilya, and I very much hate it."

Lenora set her feet far apart. She brought her right leg pointing at me a few inches forward and leaned her body backward—taking the form of someone about to throw a javelin.

"Stay still!" A flick, thrust, and finally a tight clench, Yarilya motioned her hand to uncover the gold sphere in her hollow eye socket, and just as quickly, my axes paused in mid-air.

"S-Stop..." I said, "This wouldn't—"

Lenora threw her guisarme into the night sky and dashed towards me as well, following Yarilya. With both of the girls ten meters apart from me, I shook my head and just accepted what came after.

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"Two-hundred percent output—"

A large crimson machete cut through Yarilya's other arm clean, and she cried out in pain. When Lenora's guisarme plummeted and came nearly five meters overhead, my axes liquefied, combined to form a larger version of itself and swung down.

"Gaaaaaaakhh!"

The ax broke the guisarme in half and not more a second later, it cleaved Lenora in half, from her left shoulder until her left thigh.

My Aegis did not stop there. Following up its previous attack, the ax beheaded Lenora as soon as her body fell down, to which Yarilya screamed from seeing such a sight.

"I-I'm..."

"I'll kill you, kid! I swear I'll cut you into pieces!" said Yarilya as her right arm bled profusely.

"Hic..."

I sidled to a corner before my feet took off running. I cried and cried nonstop and stumbled as I ran to nowhere. My wail echoed throughout the empty hallway. I just wanted to get away from everyone, everything.

My mouth muttered incessant apologies, and when time passed by for who knows how long, I could feel a part of myself slowly began to regress.

'Ah, where is this?' I wondered.

The scenery had changed at some point without me realizing it. This time, I was inside my house, alone. It was somewhere from midnight to early morning judging from the dreadful silence.

"...Daddy?"

A soft giggle echoed throughout the silent living room, and I found myself shivering.

I blinked, and when I allowed myself to embrace the darkness, the living room seemed to change. The sofa our family had for the longest time shifted its position around the room every moment I closed and opened my eyes.

At one point, the fluorescent light above flickered, and dead bodies filled the living room.

I hunkered down immediately and let out a scream, then, it changed again. The scene twisted and reformed, but this time, it was a memory. The time was night, still, however, I was drawing on my sketchbook alone on the sofa when the lights went out. I screamed when that happened as I was terribly afraid of the dark.

More so when I was all by myself.

I didn't move one inch and just screamed. My cry pulled Mommy's attention because she walked in through the front door after hearing me, and quickly went to my side.

"Ava, honey, the lights will return soon, alright? Mommy's here. There's nothing for you to worry about." Mommy brushed her hand through my hair as she hugged me. "When you're afraid of something... remember... Mommy is always watching you. Nothing will happen to my sweet little daughter."

I smiled and closed my eyes. Her warmth soothed me. But it was not for long before she vanished along with the house itself. I was pulled into another different memory, and when I opened my eyes, my mind immediately registered which memory it was.

This... One of the memories I was fond of.

"Hey, why do you have red eyes?" asked a boy when the last class for the day ended.

He was my classmate during my third grade, and in that school, third-graders were kids like us eight-year-olds. To answer his question, I replied I woke up one day looking like this, and then quickly trotted to Daddy waiting outside the school.

"Look, it's the weird kid," said a girl who I recognized as someone in the sixth grade.

She and her friends blocked my path just before I could walk out of the hallway. They smirked and began to ask questions I had heard a multitude of times.

"You know you're not allowed to wear colored lenses, right?" said a dark-haired boy next to the girl.

"...I-I'm not wearing any lenses."

"Haha. You're lying," said a girl. "Weirdo."

She pushed me and I stumbled right into Dale who was watching from the side. He pulled me back up, but the sixth-graders didn't stop their teasing and I got Dale involved.

They pulled at my schoolbag and unzipped it. One of them pulled out my coloring book, skimmed over the pages, and threw it. I gasped, glared at them and grabbed the book before they pushed me to the floor.

"Ava!" Dale tried to help me but the sixth-grader boys threatened him, saying that he should stay back if he didn't want to get punched.

"...Hic."

Tears welled up in my eyes and slowly, it trickled down my cheeks. They bullied me again because of my eye color.

We never met each other much less talked, but when my eyes turned the way it did, they started to come to me and teased incessantly. What was wrong with my eye color? What was wrong with being different than others?

"Get up," said one of the boys. "If you don't, I'll—"

A tall figure shadowed me and quickly, he lifted my body with both hands and carried me on one arm.

"You kids better scram before I get you one by one. Now!" said Daddy.

The bully sixth-graders scrambled away from the scene. But my eyes were not nearly focused on them as they were on Daddy. I cried in the hallway and he patted my back, trying to deaden my sadness. The next day, he confronted the bullies' respective parents with how their kids had bothered me.

The day after that, I never saw them again. They disappeared from sight and I did my school routine happily with no one bullying me in the slightest. And every time school ended, I rushed to Daddy's side and hugged him tightly.

"Daddy, I love you so, so much!!"

"I love you too, Ava."

Daddy returned my hug and kissed my forehead. Deep inside, a part of me never wanted to grow up because if I got older, Daddy wouldn't kiss me in the forehead anymore. I would get too big for him to carry me in his arms.

Slowly, I wrapped my arms around him, and after some time, Daddy asked me to let go because everyone was staring. But I didn't care about it and ceased to let go.

"Daddy... I love you so much."