Cordelia laughed. The irony had grown too great to bear. She rose to her feet, and darkness fell over the chapel. Gone was the moonlight; a cold and cruel wind had snuffed the candles; a howling came over all.

Then her face set into a grimace. Whatever Cordelia was or had been, she would stand her ground in her last moment with her head held high. And her keen senses told her everything there was to know. How, with might not yet flagged after the slaying of countless fiends, Sir Derrick’s sword arm was raised, and his charge, unerring and untroubled by doubt, towards her, there was nothing she could do to preserve herself. It would only be a tiny little shame that she should be slain for deeds not yet done.

But the knight steered from her, stepping on the pews, and upon the shelves of candelabra launched straight for the priest on the ledge. Even then the old man turned. Even then the dark shape covering the unpaned windows shrunk. For a split second Cordelia thought she saw a human shape with glinting eyes therein. But as soon the shape dispersed, converged, into a monstrous shape. The brawny body of which clinging on the window sill, its singular appendage lunged downwards, protruding at its extreme end a sharp point - its stinger.

The old priest was slow to react, yet Derrick’s swing reached the point of contact between the man and the stinger first. The scorpion tail dodged aside, the blade overcommitted. And when again it struck, and the knight had barely gained his footing upon the ledge, blocking the priest, it went through his defense, passed his blade, pierced the vambrace, and stabbed at last the unarmored body behind it.

All three fell on the dais, crashing on the fiery shelves of candelabra.

The priest never moved from where he had fallen, but the knight at once leaped up. Facing him was a prowling manticore, lion-bodied and scorpion-tailed. But its head from which the shining eyes stared out was a thing grotesque, shapeless, yet resembling something that had once been a human face but which a fire had melted into wrinkled smoothness.

The brilliant light which had banished countless feys the other night now engulfed the greatsword at Derrick’s hand. But he held it one-handed now, for the other, his right, slacked uselessly at his side, oozing and bubbling with black blood and a foul stench where the stinger had gone through.

For a moment, both sides eyed each other warily. Then as the confrontation drew on, Derrick became aware of the spreading curse at his arm. He resolved himself, and made the charge. For all that he was man and his foe beast, the manticore in the last moment yielded to his ferocity. It retreated in alarm, attempting to dodge to the side. But Derrick came with a sweeping wide arch, and the bloody blade caught half of the beast’s face, its right shoulder and foreleg. All these parts severed, the stinger still lunged for the last counter and swept at the knight’s unguarded bowel. Steel sparked. With a roar of agony, not yet a death rattle, the beast limped away towards the temple’s entrance with a still monstrous pace. At once Derrick gave chase.

Left alone, Cordelia stood paralyzed for a time, gazing at the destroyed and deserted gate in apprehension. No more fiends came. And after a while she made for the priest on the floor.

There he lay supine pathetically on the floor, his gray hair strewing and drenched in a pool of blood beneath. And yet he was breathing still. His eyes became animated again as Cordelia approached.

“Have I not warned you thus, Father?” she said impassionately, “there are things hope and prayers alone may not avail. Your light did not. Look at what end blind faith has brought you! Where is your god now? Where! father?”

“Do you come to laugh at a dying old man, Cordelia?” he said, blood dripping from his lips as he spoke.

“Aye, father. I laugh at you and many things besides.”

“You...” the priest croaked. And to her amazement, he smiled, the white of his teeth showed through the crimson stains. “You terrible liar... you miserable, sincere soul. Banish the tears, else cease the lies... it suits you not.”

“Then you know me not,” she sobbed, “I was born to lie - my nature is to lie. And ever more shall I lie, ever and ever. I lie to keep myself. Don't you see? I stand here before you and know all the better the cruel truth of the world for those who do not lie. There is not a place for untarnished kindness in this world - the wicked only may prevail. And all those who hope will despair. Those few who are good - you, your nuns, and many other fools - will eventually die off. Only those who can adapt will survive in this growing cruel world, for that is the natural laws, the only laws that matter at the end of the day! The only order in this damnable world! And all the worlds!”

And she dropped to the floor, feeling all her energy spent, as though at the end of a long and exhausting journey. Yet no triumphant accompanied the journey’s end. Only utter exhaustion and unrest. She felt a touch on her right wrist, a weak and feeble touch, opposite of the perching place of the snake Mastema.

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“That is wrong, Cordelia,” said the priest, “that is not how you live, but how you die! So what, if what you say is true? Can one live holding onto those thoughts and truly live? As naught but a walking corpse - live, yet in resentment of life! I see it in your eyes; you sought death once... or thought of it, because of those very thoughts. For if everything is wicked, and you also must be wicked, then ‘tis a life not worth living.” He coughed, and the face was pale as a corpse now, drained and exhausted, his lids half closed. Yet what blood remained seemed to course all the stronger in the veins of his limbs, for he seized hard Cordelia’s arm, enough to leave reddened marks. And the life therein reverberated now, trembling to the rising beats of a swan song. “So what if cruelty is the law of the world! So what? Why must you abide by this rule? Because reason commands you so? Can you not rebel against it? Why don’t you? Because you are not good? Because you harbor dark thoughts? You are not perfect, and I am not incorrupt. But do we all of us not live and believe because, at one time or another, we have encountered this brilliant goodness in someone, in small glimpses or a single glorious, passing moment, and so know it does exist? The goodness then has not changed. The remembered kindness unmarred! You keep them in your heart, and the world could go and corrupt itself many times over, and still they stay! Cling to those, not dark reality at hand! Be unwise despite reasons! Live by your own laws! I charge you to live, Cordelia, without ever a thought for mere survival!”

Last vitality expired, the priest’s grasp slackened.

Cordelia stared, and asked, “Can a remembered light really sustain me through all this?”

“It must suffice, for now,” she answered herself, and gently closed the priest’s eyes. When she rose again, it was difficult to find the gravity center, for an old light was dazzling her second vision, its brilliant sparkles did not cease even as they faded, but at the edge of vision shone on blindingly. From the outside there was little to tell what it was she was seeing, nor could anyone in that world comprehend the scenes in her mind recalled. It was enough that she did. And she muttered out loud, as though to reaffirm to a world that sees but does not understand what’s foreign to its being, “I shall fight for her then. And that should be enough.”

There was something new in her strides now as she marched to the temple gate. And there she stopped, looking down at a slumping figure at the threshold, who had made it back after a desperate chase.

“Will you live, Sir Derrick?” she asked dispassionately.

The man gave her a strange look. He was clutching his bowel, where the plate had broken, and dark and foul flesh poured out from within. At the steps of the broken gate to the temple, moonlight bathed him, rendering a serene image as of knights-errant in tales who make crossroads their bed and starlit sky blanket.

“What will you do?” he asked.

“I do not know.” She crouched. “Life is uncertain, and I do not care for the mission of my master.”

“If you dare harm Esme...!” his voice raised nigh a bellow ere he was checked by a succession of bloody coughing fits.

“She has done me no wrong. Nor have you. And yet I have a mind to use her to take revenge upon this world. What do you think?”

“You bitch-“

She hushed the knight. “You have not time to argue, Sir Derrick. This I know: the Holy Maiden has a mission. For she is this world’s savior. Why then did you take her away and hide her in the woods?”

He did not answer. A last obstinacy shut tight his mouth as the man stared back with hatred. Or mayhap not. It was something else. Something like shame and selfishness.

“A martyr death,” she held his gaze, spelling out his unsaid words. “She will die to save humanity! That’s why you tried to protect her from her destiny.”

“For which I am punished by this fitting end,” he smiled without mirth, “A traitor betrayed.”

“Not yet.” She placed a hand on his breastplate, searching for the bindings. “This world indeed must be cleansed by your dear little sister’s hand. And yet...” She inhaled deeply. For the solemn oath she was to make was as much to herself as to the knight. “And yet, I mislike following any god’s design. The good ones or the bad ones, I despise them all! So let’s do it this way, Derrick. I swear upon the light which guides me in my most desperate hour: I shall help fulfill your sister’s destiny, but I shall save her also, no matter the cost! For even as a girl I once knew, she is the light of this world, and a light which should not be extinguished for causes noble or evil! Do you trust me, Sir Derrick? I require your strength to do this.”

“What will you do?” His eyes were laden with doubt.

Cordelia finished untying the bindings of his plate and, with some difficulty for it was much dented, removed it, revealing the heaving, bruised chest of the knight. For a time, she searched for something–something sharp. But his greatsword would be far too unwieldy for the task. Then she found a dagger hidden in his greave.

“Do you trust me?” she repeated, with all the sincerity she could ever muster in words.

Cordelia would never forget the many emotions surfacing in the eyes of the knight in his last hour. Fear, grief, agony, desperation. But last, after the other, trivial things of a human had exhausted themselves and resolved at last to the core, the essence of a soul, the uncorrupted spark, there came hopes.

“Tell her,” he said, “that I perished with a smile, having done so to save a beautiful girl.”

And he smiled at the irony of it, even as Cordelia drove the dagger deep in his chest. She dared not retreat from thoughts, though wishing in her heart of hearts that he had died after the first strike, or would die quickly. Else it would be too great an agony for both him and her.

All too clear she knew what must be done. All along she had known. But it was time she stopped averting her eyes from the truth. And so she set her mind to the task, not mindlessly but with a grim purpose.

The bloody task done, she reached tremblingly inside the carven ribcage, severed the veins and the artery. In both hands she took out the heart, and, after a deep breath, opened her mouth.