Multiple things happened at once. None that boded well for me.

Adalia reeled back in shock and awe, contrasting that, her sister shrieked with rage and hastily picked me up by the scruff of my shirt and suspended me high in the air.

“Wrong… answer…” She huffed, her entire face trembling with anger. “Have you any idea what you’ve just done?!”

“Terestra… Terestra… I… found you… we found you… Sister always said… I’ve always… hoped…”

Adalia continued to spout out breathless words, her misty eyes glistening with tears.

“I don’t…” I said, heaving, kicking my legs in an attempt to swing myself loose. “But I’m guessing her dining on my blood is off the table now, huh?”

“Won’t stop me from killing you myself,” She hissed.

“Don’t!”

A voice that was brimming with emotions, Adalia drew herself to her sister’s side, placing a hand against the arm that had me dangling.

“Please… sister…” Adalia said, “Terestra… has come to us… don’t hurt… him…”

Rage overruled reason. Still, I was swayed along by her like I was a simple sheet of paper. The sister’s loathing eyes would not stray away from mine.

She marched, her stomps echoing across the empty halls, with me still in her grasp, Adalia closely trailing along trying to plead with her.

“Sister… Amelia… please... he isn’t… to be harmed...”

“I’ll prove it!” The sister yelled. “He’s human, and I’ll show you. Terestra is here but it isn’t him. Once he stops breathing, you’ll finally realize.”

Before I knew it, I was being flung into a room, my entire body sent crashing to the ground with another loud thud. I was reeling, everything was spinning, any attempt to try and push myself up resulted in me just tumbling down again to repeat the process.

Dazed as I was, I could still somewhat see what was happening around me. I was thrown into another room, yet unlike all others, this one appeared to be in use. The twin sisters towered over me, one timidly behind the other, trying her best to save me.

“I’ll be upset… if you… do this…”

Words that fell on deaf ears. The sister unwillingly pulled me to my feet, dragging me to wherever she wanted me to be.

“Better you upset than frenzied,” She said, her jagged nails threatening to pierce the surface of my arm. “I don’t care. I’m doing this.”

Somewhere in the nauseating swivel and swirling view of the room, I saw it. An unmistakable glimmer at the far end across from me. In the night, it glowed bright… shimmering emerald eyes.

“Ash…”

I didn’t realize I was already reaching out for her. Her white flowing hair, her distinct pointed ears. Seeing her up close again, the pain, the dizziness… it all felt secondary now.

My body gave a spontaneous lurch towards her direction. Movement that was quickly halted by the Matriarch's iron clutch. She yanked me away, sinking and shredding into the flesh of my arm in the process. I felt the blood ooze away, the searing pain scorched my senses, I didn’t care.

Not when she was right there, not when she was just within arm’s reach.

“Come on, Ash!”

I already knew it was futile to call out for her. Quiet, despondent, her eyes, they stared at me, watched me struggle for dear life, yet she remained motionless and expressionless.

The next thing I knew, I was being flung in the air again. Mid-air for barely even a second before I was sent crashing onto a hard rickety surface. I found myself staring at the ceiling unable to move both my arms and legs… something had constricted them, something coarse… rough.

I moved my head.

Rope. Tied onto my arms and legs, binding me in place, laid spread out on top of a decaying wooden table. I didn’t even see it happen… feel it happen, yet somehow the Matriarch in front of me was already done tying the last knot.

Trying to wrestle free from the binds was useless. She had tied my limbs down tight enough that the rope was scraping bits of skin off of me so that every move I made was agony. The only thing I could possibly move unhindered was my neck.

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So that’s what I did. Helplessly craning about, desperately searching for a way out of this predicament. My eyes landed again within Ash’s vacant gaze, standing directly across from me, her silence further affirming to me what I already knew.

Ash wasn’t going to help me.

“The Elf will only do our bidding now. She won’t listen to you.”

The Matriarch's face loomed at me from above, seeing her this close, the way she towered over me… I didn’t care anymore. The agony, the aching, the bleeding, they were insignificant when compared to the bubbling anger that arose within me at the forefront of everything else.

“You done… having a tantrum yet?”

The words were a struggle to speak out but nevertheless they had the desired effect. Had her spiteful gaze been able to elicit pain, I wouldn’t even be alive right then and there.

“Perhaps you need a demonstration,” she said, shifting her sights over to Ash. “Elf, get over here and break this idiot’s foot.”

Oh no…

There was no warning, no chance to appeal to her sense of self. The way Ash stirred to life under the Matriarch's words, stiffer than a puppet on strings… a puppet in the form of the woman whom I thought would never dare harm me.

"Don't Ash…"

I’ve sprained my wrist before. I knew just how unbearable the pain was during the recovery process.

"Don't."

It couldn’t compare.

"Please..."

Ash gripped both hands firmly to the shoe on my left foot, without even a shred of hesitation, staring straight into my pleading eyes, she twisted it in one swift motion.

The sound of bone snapping came first, followed shortly after by an overwhelming surge of pain, then came my scream of total anguish echoing throughout the entire building.

Through teary eyes and quick heavy breaths, I saw my foot bent over at a bizarre angle sideways, twitching with every jolt of pain that reverberated throughout my entire body.

“Only human,” The Matriarch muttered, eyeing her sister. “I told you.”

“Should I break the other one?” Ash suddenly said, her voice as empty as her gaze, turning towards the Matriarchs. “Masters?”

I could hardly believe what I was hearing. A memory flash through my head. Asteria… and how she had effortlessly snapped off a man’s head.

“Yes,” said the first.

“No…” whispered the second.

Ash was motionless for a moment before withdrawing a step back. To my absolute surprise, Adalia overruled her sister. I drew a sigh of relief.

Despite all that had happened, I still felt an inkling of hope, Adalia could still save me… somehow. I forced myself to bear with the pain so I could bear witness to the sisters at odds with one another.

“Adalia… why do you keep insisting on this… this - thing?!”

“My wishes… sister… my wants…. do you not… care… anymore?”

Second time just then, the sister’s voice went soft. “Of course I do.”

“Then don’t…” Adalia’s breath wavered. “Hurt him…”

With an irritable click of a tongue, the Matriarch shook her head. “You’re still not convinced,” then turning back towards me, her glare reforming as soon as her eyes caught mine, extended her razor-like nails inches above my chest. “Watch.”

I saw it before I felt it.

The way her nails burrowed deep into my flesh, how it skewered effortlessly passed the fabric and into the skin, how the pain kept intensifying with every writhe and twist she did with her wrist.

My screams once more would go unheeded as she dug deeper and deeper into my bare chest.

“Now if he was Terestra… none of this would be happening,” grunted the Matriarch, a thick coating of red darkening her fingers. “If he was Terestra he would have stopped me already, I wouldn’t be able to pierce his skin. If he was Terestra…”

She retracted her claws from my skin, leaving blood to splurge endlessly out of the puncture holes, and stared directly at me.

“He would have killed me already, effortlessly,” she finished.

I was at the brink of death, the pain was fading, my sight was blurring… I could barely keep myself conscious enough to see that Adalia had taken a hold of her sister’s hand and was clinging to it tightly.

“One… more…” heaved Adalia, “I will not… forgive… another…”

“Then eat him, Adalia, please! I just - “

The rest of the conversation was like a distant echo to me. All I could focus on was the gradually blackening of my sight, the chill I felt as my sensation slowly started to numb…

Yet my chest stayed warm.

A heavy warmth.

Realization flickered my eyes wide open. How could I have forgotten? It was just there - the answer to my predicament, hanging loosely around my neck, the amulet Irene gave to me.

That was my key.

Break it, that’s what she had said. Break it and she’ll come to me.

I tilted my neck forward as much as I could, narrowing both eyes to the bulge protruding out of my chest. There it was, the amulet, laying limp at an angle, smeared slightly in blood.

It was also at the verge of breaking.

Cracks had formed around the entire surface of the amulet. My only guess was that it had already suffered damages due to me being flung around all over the place like a ragdoll.

So very nearly there…

All I needed now was just one more good toss. But seeing as how I was shackled to a table with a broken foot, aching muscles, tattered arm, and five large gaping holes in my chest…

I needed to come up with something soon and fast or die trying. The question was how? What can I do, the way I am now, to be able to split the amulet apart?

The answer to that question surprisingly, came to me sooner than I anticipated, and in a form that I did not expect.

As I squirmed helplessly on the table, I heard one of its legs gave a creak. A loud one. I moved again and the table wobbled along after me.

It seems like the amulet wasn’t the only thing on the verge of crumbling into pieces.

I found my last good toss.