Maria´s eyes fluttered open, widening at the sudden change of scenery. She laid in twilight, in the middle of a hallway illuminated by small candles on the walls, stretching so far that she could not see the end. The sound of rattling chains had her jump to her feet, with the help of her arms.

In shock she stared at her shoulder, and her old arm. It moved and felt the same as before she lost it, it brought tears to her eyes. The rattling sound echoed through the endless dark once more, and she now turned to face the source of it.

A figure was standing in a cell to her right. malnourished and weak, Maria could see the ribs poking through their parchment-like skin. She could not tell if it was a man or a woman, age and abuse had robbed the figure of any discerning features. Both legs and hands were bound, and it weakly tried to move in place, causing the sounds.

"Worry not, my master." The voice had Maria turn on her heels. Sin stepped out of the dark, unharmed, yet tattered. She wore an ancient uniform of a maid, her hair cut short just to her shoulders.

She tried to open her mouth to speak, but was silenced by Maria throwing herself at her servant.

"Where are we, my arm, what is that thing, Sin." Maria´s lips were quivering as her eyes teared up. "Will you still be leaving?"

"I am afraid so, my master." Sin ran her hand through Maria´s hair and bit her lip. "We have only a short while, not nearly enough for me to tell you everything. Please, follow me."

Sin took her master´s hand, together they marched on through the dark. The scene was always the same. Weak and tortured souls, chained behind bars, staring blankly into the distance. The sounds their lurching movements made was the only thing that joined the echoes of their footsteps.

"We are within the Bastille, my master. The embodiement of the power of Len-Fey." A few of the inmates they passed let out guttural moans of pain, only silenced by the glares that Sin gave them as they passed.

"Every soul I reaped has been entombed here. Warriors of old, hapless soldiers who signed on the wrong side, heads of great families and verminous cretin. You are here, precisely because of my own mistakes."

Maria leaned her head back to look up, and stood still. Right above them within the wall was another row of parallel cells, and another after that, extending further than she could see into the near endless dark above.

"I was very busy, and successful, you can see." Sin looked to the side, unable to meet her master´s gaze. "But if I were to leave this world, it would all be for naught. All their knowledge, their power, it would fade away to nothingness. I could not let that happen."

Maria reached out with her new arm and laid it on Sin´s shoulder. "What did you do?" Her voice was shaking, which spread through to her body as Sin looked back at her in sorrow.

"I clung to the only living thing around that could absorb it into themselves. That would have enough willpower to shoulder and use this trove of knowledge and power. That would use it only in order to further the interests of my master. You, my master."

Sin stopped at one of the cells. With a wave of her hand the segment of the wall began to sink into the ground, stopping as the cell of a woman reached their level. Her hands had been cut off, she was chained to the wall by her ankles, as well as a collar on a pole that forced her to stay upright at all times. Both eyes were missing.

"Anara, mistress of the black flame." Sin let out a laugh, interrupted by violent coughing. She wiped the blood off her mouth and continued. "She lead some backwater tribe and thought that double-crossing your family would earn her people 'freedom'. Pathetic. But she did create the black fires, very useful."

With another wave of her hand the horizontal segment began to move forward, until they stood in front of the cell of a tall, hulking man. His head had been removed, it gazed at them from a small pedestal next to his body. Arms and legs were forced to spread thanks to hooks burrowed deep within his flesh.

"And this is Geironne, the cursed bladesman. Little more than a pest, but he had gotten his hand on a very peculiar sword I took from him. It fused it with Armoire´s body, and whatever took her out should still be insufficient to destroy it. Please hold on to it, my master. Whoever you gift it to will do well in your name."

The servant turned to face Maria and spread her arms. "I am sure you understand. Each and every one of these fools stood against your line. And every last one of them can make the foundation of another loyal beast. Before it was our access to blood that limited out number, but now?"

With a quiet splash, fingers from her left hand fell off, landing on the ground and dissolving. Sin let out a sigh. "We must move on." With every step Sin now left a trail of blood, dripping from her limbs as her body continued to melt.

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They reached a wide open circular room, with three additional exits leading into the dark. It was filled to the brim with pedestals holding weapons of all kinds. Greatswords, bows, modern rifles, hammers, tomes. Maria spun around as she took them in, though her gaze continued to return to Sin with ever greater worry.

"The armoury, I am certain it is explanatory. Without me you will be needing to fight yourself, I fear. Until you find a worthy replacement of course. You will find something that suits you, of that I have no doubt." Sin stopped in the middle of the room and crossed her arms in front of her chest. A pool of blood quickly began to form underneath her.

"Many will flock to you now, that is the reward of the deserved victor, my master." Sin stared at a point above Maria´s shoulder and gritted her teeth. "Use them as they are useful, but remember that they will abandon you the moment it may be in their favour. Only in the blood of your blood can you trust, in my sisters."

Maria narrowed her eyebrows and leaned her head to the side. "But they are not, wait. Am I a beast now?"

With a grim look on her face, Sin nodded. "It was the only way, that is why I asked for your forgiveness. The blood will subsume your body, envelope your lore and your soul, and when the process is finished, it will force mine out. No body can hold two souls, after all. Had we time and were Tetra Trinity, perhaps." She shook her head.

"Many things will be different for you, my master. You will no longer need to eat, or sleep, only the greatest efforts will exhaust you. Wounds that would kill lesser beings will mean nothing. However, my master." Sin´s hand clenched around her arm, hard enough to break the lower half off, it fell to the ground and dissolved.

"You will hunger."

Maria grasped Sin´s other arm, as gently as she could. Even under her weak grasp the flesh was giving way, she pulled back immediately. "Please, conserve yourself, I am sure it will be fine, I can take it." Though wavering Maria put all she had into sounding positive, an effort that failed at the look of pain on Sin´s face.

"You do not understand, my master." Sin cast her gaze to the ground. "Yggdrasil loathes me for her hunger, she thinks it a flaw that only she is cursed with. But all of us suffer under it, just under different guises. Elaine burns for affection, Menagerie´s mind is seized by iteration and recognition for her genius, Tetra will be consumed by her desire for knowledge like her predecessor, Armoire lived for vengeance above all."

Blood was running down her face in place of tears. "We are gluttons, my master. Were it not for our chains to your line, we would be beasts in more than just name. It is your authority that gives us a purpose beyond the hunger that is eating at us. But you will have no such recourse. I fear not for you to fall by the hands of some enemy, or even treachery. But this, it does frighten me."

The flesh on her face began to drip down to the ground, exposing a pitch-black skeleton underneath. "There is one more chamber, if you would please follow me."

Maria had to slow her pace, as every step was becoming a challenge for her servant. She bit her lip and wrapped her arm around her servant´s body, letting Sin lean on her. Together they reached entryway, and the gaping void in front of them. Fires on the walls began to spread, to shed light on the horror beyond.

The room was a pit of proportions Maria could not fathom. Even with the lights she could not see the other three walls, let alone the ceiling. Only the writhing mass of bodies as far as the eye could see.

Shattered, torn apart, maimed they laid there, the most fortunate gargling pain-fueled moans. The number overwhelmed her, she could not make out even a single detail, but the revulsion she felt was one out of disgust. Not to her feelings, but to her senses. Quickly she turned away.

"This is where those too weak and insignificant go. You need not concern yourself with them, they are fuel, nothing more." Sin´s voice had begun to grow distorted and echoing as more of her flesh dripped off her bones.

"I fear, that this is it, my master. My last moments of service. There is so much more I wished to say." She stumbled back and sank down the wall as her legs began to dissolve.

Maria sat down next to her, tears already running down her cheeks, as black as Sin´s blood. "You said you all were hungering for something, but you did not tell me what it was for you."

Sin could no longer smile, her lips had already melted, but her voice rung with a sense of happiness. "Death, of course. I sought to maim and slaughter, to forget the beautiful world the maggots had crushed. I cared for my masters, of course, but ultimately I only sought to lose myself in carnage. So many I have followed, claiming royalty, and they all failed at it´s most basic challenges. All besides you, my master. Maria."

Her remaining arm was nothing but bone, trembling as she reached out to run her fingers across Maria´s cheek. "I fought for you, not my hunger, for the first time in a hundred years. Please do not weep, this death of mine is but a return to how I was before meeting you."

Maria could no longer contain herself, wailing shook her body to the core. A writhing pain wracked her body, physically and emotionally. "Sin, I, I-"

"Shhh" Her servant laid a finger on her lips. "I know. I feared the day I would have to hold your dead body in my arms. It is selfish, and cruel, but I am happy to be leaving this way. I gave my all, and whatever place I will go to, I will not have to go in shame. For I died in the name of the greatest queen this wretched world has been blessed with."

The arm fell from her body, her torso was already starting to dissolve as her voice grew weaker.

"May you reign forever, Maria."

With these last words, her skeleton crumbled in on itself, leaving only a black puddle on the ground.

Maria continued to sob and shake, her clawlike nails dug into her face, drawing drops of black blood. The sobs turned into choking as her lungs felt filled with liquid, her body writhing with the desperation of the drowning. Her eyes shot open wide.

And she saw through the liquid surrounding her body, the thin membrane that surrounded her. Saw the distorted image of Tetra standing before her, clinging to a blade, staring at her in terror.