Rain.

Thick. Murky. Red.

The blackened clouds above the grove open and spill their payload on the slowly dying grass – staining each flower with crimson.

My eyes blink through the crimson hailstorm to see Myra fight back against Seneca’s hold, while the latter laughs in her pinned victim’s face.

“My, my,” she snarls. “You still have the audacity to struggle?”

“I won’t…yield…to you!”

I try every skill I have. I try to will my body to move – to jump, leap, roll towards Myra and cast off the fiend that’s got her in its clutches. But every subtle movement of my limbs feels like trying to drag them through a slim hallway coated with treacle.

Debuff Received: Kiss of the Darkseed (CONCENTRATION)

[Core Skills: DEACTIVATED]

[Martial Skills: DEACTIVATED]

Nothing. Not a single hair on my paws responds. Not a single twitch of my Lightborn powers abide. All I can do is move my snout and open my mouth – even though no words come out.

Useless. Damnit! I’m useless!

Seneca’s thorns slip deeper through my armor and my eyes fly to the blood-drenched skies.

This is…not…how I want…to die…

Come on, Raz! There’s a way out. There’s always a way…

“Bravery,” Seneca smiles in Myra’s face. “The saddest part is that you always had it in you, Myrathellon. But when push came to shove you just couldn’t follow through and do what your heart told you. You had to obey your precious Mistress – just like the rest of them.”

Her Scythe slips ever closer to Myra’s eyeballs, blood still streaming down her forehead from her last wound.

“And look where it’s got you,” the assassins continues, her every word practically dripping with bile. “Your people are dead. Your ‘honor’ is trod on, and soon even Palka will fall to Lady Gyko. Can you imagine it, dear sister? Your old Mistress burning down heretics across the land, spreading the name of the Lady through righteous fire?”

…wait. Focus on the spell. The words. What did it say?

Debuff received: Kiss of the Darkseed (CONCENTRATION)

Concentration…

“Tell me, sis,” Seneca drones on through laughter, and through the crack of thunder from above. “Tell me you see the End.”

“I…I see…you…”

Concentration – that sounds familiar somehow…

“This…this is what…you’ve always…been.”

Seneca throws her head back. Her laughter echoes out her blackened throat like the wail of a thirsting demon.

“Better than you?” she retorts.

“Enraged…angry…once it…it made you…strong. Now…it’s made you…a slave.”

Both scythes inch close enough to draw themselves across Myra’s cheeks. She screams out as a stroke of bloody lightning rips through the sky above.

“Say that again,” Seneca whispers to her prey’s screaming face.

“We…we’re both slaves…” Myra groans through her pain. “Slaves who…think we’ve got…no other choice but to…obey! But…but we…we…”

“We do?!” Seneca roars, fury taking her over now. “Bullshit, Myra! You want to talk about choice? I chose Lady Gyko! She welcomed me! She opened her arms to me with love! She took me in when you all left me to die out there!”

“She took you…for…your anger…your rage…she…made you…this…used you.”

Concentration…requires that the caster focuses on their incantation. If I can break her focus…but with what?

Come on, Myra. All I need is a single opening. Keep her talking…

“You know nothing of the Lady,” Seneca growls like a predator. “She’s a mistress that’s worth serving. She has already given me more gifts than Palka ever could. Soon, I shall be her champion.”

“You…will…be…fooled. Nothing more.”

“Insolent wretch!”

She grabs Myra’s whole face and forces her fingers into the soft skin of her pale cheeks.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

“It’s so easy for you, isn’t it? You and all your sisters – so self-righteous, so confident in your honor, your precious, precious purity. You have no idea what I had to do to survive out there, after you shunned me. After you cast me out like I was nothing. You left me to die all alone. And now, now you dare to lecture me after I have come back to you stronger, faster, and with the blade that will finally erase your hideous little stain on this earth!”

From Seneca’s lower back – movement. A gyration of her hips, then a sickening twist followed by the cracking of bone as a flexile tail emerges from her back. It’s lithe, sinewy texture forms into another scythe that rises above Seneca’s head and aims itself at Myra.

“Witness the gift of Lady Gyko. The beauty she has given me as her chosen. Now, it’s you that’s all alone, Myra,” she snarls. “And you will die alone.”

“You’re…wrong…”

…Wait a minute.

…that just might be the answer…

My eyes bulge as I command my body to shake off my backpack, forcing the straps off and chewing at them with the one part of my body I can still move.

“You dareto still talk back?” Seneca howls. “You think you have a chance against me? Against the envoy of the one who shall soon be the master of this entire world?”

My snout tears into my bag once I finally get the thing off me.

Come on…where is it…where…

My nose bumps itself against old, grimy glass.

YES!

“No,” Myra replies through her bleeding lips. “Me…alone…no. But…I…made a choice…too…Seneca. Only I didn’t choose a new master.”

She turns to look at me and, as soon as she sees what I’m holding in my mouth, she manages to smile even through all her gushing wounds.

“I chose a friend.”

I chomp right through the glass and feel its yolky contents pour down my throat.

“PATHETIC!” Seneca cries as she brings her tail-scythe down. “YOU CHOSE DEATH!”

[Spirit Imbibed]

Substance: Thundersnaps Cider

[Belch] effects: Gust of wind up to 40 knots. Results in status condition {KNOCKBACK}

[Belch]

ACTIVATED

Before Seneca’s vile appendage cracks into Myra’s skull, a storm erupts from my throat.

She has time only to look my way as the gale whips up, my teeth chattering on end as a tornado rockets out from my gullet and smacks into Seneca’s face, throwing her clear across the field. Myra manages to roll out of its impact, watching as the storm consumes her attacker entirely.

Her tail pierces into the ground, trying to stabilize her while the crimson flowers field is decimated – every petal, every stem, even clods of the earth itself is torn from its place and thrown at her, eventually dislodging and sending her spiraling out of control again.

My incline my mouth towards the sky, taking the bellowing assassin up into the air as the tornado tears through the artificial clouds of the grove.

“Myra!” I croak out the corner of my mouth. “NOW!”

She’s already got her sword drawn before I issue the command, and sends out a [Glittering Thrust] right into the eye of the storm.

It picks it up and we see the brilliant light travel up the tornado’s surface – tendrils of electricity crackling up its sides, weaving their way into the storm’s center.

[SYNERGY UNLOCKED]

[Glittering Thrust] + [Magic Effect: ]

Effect: for 30 secs

Well, that’s…new.

It’s become so loud that my ears can barely pick up the screams of Seneca as each tendril of energy finds her and picks her apart. Myra does nothing but look on, watching as blood still streams down her face, her sword wavering in her hand.

“So, this is the power of the Lightborn…”

After a while I can’t keep my throat open anymore – and before it dries up to a raisin, I bring my head down upon the training tree and watch the storm splinter it apart, sending something small, charred, and screaming into what remains of the field beneath it.

“Myra,” I pant. “Are…are you..?”

She wipes the blood from her weeping wounds.

“I breathe. That’s enough.”

“Have I ever told you that you’re a real trooper?”

She gives me a rueful smirk as we walk towards Seneca’s mangled form on the ground, her regeneration cut off from the might of the attack. She’s nothing but a smoking mess of burning vines, tangled threads of crisping bark, and her screaming maw.

I cringe as I look down at her. “Well, this is a familiar sight.”

We got her, Aethel, I think with, I must admit, a little flicker of satisfaction. We got her again.

“COWARDS!” She bellows, and the strength of her cry genuinely surprises me for someone who, by the looks of it, currently has one less lung than usual. “INEPT, BARELY SENTIENT HUSKS! ONCE I BRING YOU TO THE LADY, SHE SHALL HAVE HER WAY WITH YOUR CORPSES!”

“Lady,” I say. “You’ve got some real issues…”

Her head suddenly jerks up, sending me reeling back, sword ready. Even in defeat, I know this crazy girl’s not one to underestimate.

“H-HOW!?” she says. Then, much more quietly: “H…how can one such as you be chosen? A puny, worthless being, who can do nothing without the help of his pathetic friends!”

She regards both of us through the smoke-filled crater she lies within.

“I could gut both of you without anyone’s help!” she cries. “Tell me, how do you dare stand before me? ME?! My skills are beyond you both! You couldn’t sit on my level in your wildest dreams!”

I’m about to say something short and quippy before finally driving my sword through this girl’s face. But Myra steps forward, and I figure that I owe her this one.

“You’re right, Seneca,” she says, her voice tinged with sorrow. “Alone, you could probably best us both. But we aren’t alone. We don’t walk this earth alone. Not really. We’re a part of something greater.”

She turns to me then, looking at me through all her cuts and bruises.

“Of all things, it took a dog to help me realize that,” she says. “I suppose in that sense we are the same, Seneca. You don’t have to die like this. You still have a chance to make the right choice.”

I watch the burning assassin’s eyes glimmer for just a moment. I don’t know what’s happening behind them. But for a moment, I see it: a little spark as she meets Myra’s eyes, and her mouth twitches as she hears her words.

Then I see it again: that evil, sickening smile.

“I’m not alone,” she says. “Not anymore. You have your friends, Myrathellon? Witness the strength of mine.”

Something flashes from between her teeth. Something small, round, and green. Like the very same seed that had restored her before.

Only this time…

“You all made my choice for me long ago,” she snarls through her fading breath. “My destiny…is this.”

[Snoop]

ACTIVATED

Item identified…

…

“Myra,” I say. “Run.”

She looks at me with eyes clouded by blood, and when she turns back to Seneca she sees the globule in the latter’s mouth glow lambent red.

Seneca’s eyes suddenly go wide.

“Wha…”

I slam my paw into Myra’s hand.

[Blink]

We make it just to the edge of the grove before Seneca’s body erupts in an explosion that kills the rest of the plants that remain and sends us catapulting back through the entrance with the assassin’s last word ringing in our ears:

“THOORRRRRRRN!”