Chapter 10:

Wills and Fates of Witches

Rest Easy, My Cerulea


X.Wills and Fates of Witches

“Laionne… about what that guy said.” I had opened my mouth without even considering what I should follow up with. We were advancing up a shoddy footpath leading to the summit of a tall, forested hill, which would allow us to see Culanngor in its entire glory from above. Dark clouds had gathered overhead. On this trail already shaded over by the thick, interlocking canopy, the hum of leaves had plunged us into a night-like dimness. I watched my companion from behind. Her restless step carried with it a starkness much appropriate for the uneasy rustling and darkness around us. Bereft of light, the sights around faded… and one could only see the winding road ahead.

“Niccolina,” she struck through the silence born of my inability to comfort her. “Thanks to you, I have seen the world in its place-bound motion. I've always had a desire to answer the questions plaguing my mind. Now I stand faced with another.” She peered at me from over her shoulder, her brows strangely furrowed and lips wearing the signs of a dejected smile. She was shaken but resolute, and spoke the unfortunate query now wormed into her head.

“Must we all become murderers—those of us who wish for a kinder world?”

My breath hitched in my throat. With my mouth agape like an idiot, I could barely force out a few breathless gasps, grasping at any kind of straw of reason, but letting go before it could take root at my lips. I had never believed that the world could be kind. I had always spited it deep in my heart. Having been burned since early childhood, I had discarded such notions and wore the guise of a greedy opportunist. I pretended to be too good for it, all the while snapping, yelling and swearing like a hypocrite. It was Laionne who had dispelled my nihilism, showing me that I’d been wrong, and that good could be found if you looked for it. Through her, I was allowed to care when I snapped; when I yelled it had been for justice; and I swore, on occasion, because I found it idiotic to do or say the wrong thing. Laionne had been pure. She sought to do the right thing for no other reason than that it should be done. She believed in fairy tales, where everyone could get a happy ending—and made me believe in turn. Greedily, a part of me had wanted her to keep believing, so that I could afford to do so as well… but we didn’t live in a fairy tale. Eventually we would clash with irredeemable enemies or have to make sacrifices, because there were those who would vehemently refuse change for good. I figured maybe I shouldn’t say anything. That maybe I should allow her to find the answer without my counsel. It was another selfish, unforgivable decision on my part. I wanted her to stay pure… but knew that she couldn’t, no matter how hard she tried. So I failed to offer her solace, and provided nothing at all.

“Neither my teacher nor the Dark Saint know the answer, it seems.” Her gaze hardened and shifted back to the footpath. “That is why he acquiesced to leaving so easily. He wants us to find one—an answer, that is. I wish to do so as well, so I shall take on the Dragon Witch with the full weight of my Heart. Either way, it shall not break.”

That’s what told me, as if her self-assuredness had never actually left her. I hated myself for not understanding how she felt.

Shortly after, we stepped foot into the pincer-like embrace of a split clearing. The tall oak trees had parted as if to form a mountain valley, reverent for the scenic display beyond them. We were at the peak of the hill. Shoulder-to-shoulder, our eyes fell on what would unmistakably be our destination, spreading out so vast, yet entirely imperceptible from any lower down. Culanngor was no ordinary mining town. It took the shape of an enormous chasm in the earth, made up of cascading layers like an upside-down cake—each twenty to forty paces tall—stretching so far down I couldn’t hope to see the bottom through the darkness. The layers were roughly circular, and the first had had all of its wall-length fashioned into the likeness of a defensive but decorated castle. There towered perpendicular gates and fortifications every tenth of its radius, and the mined-out walls were dotted with posts for archers, cave-like nooks full of derelict tents and hitching posts, as well as grim-carved gargoyles and etchings. One might assume the need for ten gates arose from the danger of enemies potentially descending from all sides, but the path through the layer was linear. The drop from the surface to its wide floor would kill or maim any man, and due to its artificially-dug ninety degree angle, climbing down would never be comfortable. The first gate in sequence had to be approached from a stone stairway appended to the wall, which could only accommodate a single person with its width. The last gate then led to a drop and a different stairway down. The second layer had house-fronts where the labourers must’ve lived, and any layer below that had features indicative strictly of mining. The structure was nothing short of impressive. I guessed that not even the most determined of invaders would bother sieging it in full, and also that a project so magnanimous couldn’t have been accomplished without the aid of witchcraft. However, the mines had apparently dried up long ago. Where used to dwell soldiers, miners, their families and deposits of precious metals, now only dilapidation and emptiness lingered in their place. Although that wasn’t entirely accurate.

“Lai-o, look. By that gate.” I pointed to a barricade on the side we faced directly. There were a number of orange lights glowing in its shadow, some moving around and others flush against the ground. Their jitters were large and frantic, like fish dashing madly in a closed aquarium, and from time to time one would be flung around weightlessly or drop and stop moving. There was also a single light far brighter than the others. It stood proudly in place—unperturbed by the chaos encasing it.

“We’re late.” Laionne sighed, placing her hand at her chin.

“Looks like they ran into trouble. We need to hurry before the commission takes care of itself.” I echoed the obvious, though I had no ability to achieve it. We still needed to climb down the hill, walk along Culanngor’s circumference until we reached the first gate, and then hurry to the fourth, where a fight was ostensibly happening. Witchcraft would have to be our solution. I could’ve feasibly launched us through the air with a blast or explosion, but I couldn’t account for missing limbs and let alone the landing, so… Laionne had to bear the brunt again—the fragile girl with her repertoire of six-hundred and seventeen spells both experimental and field-tested, that I could never hope to match.

“We cannot make it on foot. Unfortunately, humans aren’t constructed for jet-stream propulsion either…” She lamented. “Niccolina, stand behind me and hold on tightly. I have figured out a way.”

“A-As... As you say m’lady.” I stammered, maintained professionalism, but acquiesced, stepping to touch the tips of my shoes to her heels. I wrapped my arms around her torso, and (for the sake of stability, don’t laugh or make assumptions!) couldn’t help but press my cheek against the top of her head. Touch had always mutually reinforced us. It allowed for her gentleness and my boldness to mix and support each other… and I wanted to support her at the time.

“Why the needless shift? Ah, nevermind.” Laionne took a deep breath. She summoned her staff into her hand and aimed it at the dirt underneath our feet, channelling her mana as usual. The earth shook and grumbled. Tendrils of soil rose and coiled around our legs, before launching forward with us suddenly. The powerful motion would’ve snapped my spine if not for Laionne, though it stabilised quickly to a non-lethal speed, and we found ourselves surfing on a raised mound of dirt and stone. It glided down the hill and rapidly advanced to our destination, skirting along the edge of the chasm.

“To make the soil move,” she spoke, “is easier than moving spirit. Perhaps I’ve been blind. Changing the world is nothing short of a Great Work, and the second step towards it cannot be ignored. The recipe is strict.”

“. . .” I made no reply.

In the span of a few minutes, we were upon the flimsy, deterring stairs. Through Laionne’s witchcraft, the soil we had accumulated left our feet and covered the stairway like a carpet—or more-so a ramp with a railing—that we slid down safely to the bottom. Wanting to prevent pointless exhaustion on her part, I scooped my ever-weightless lady up like a princess and began running, only to set her down half-way through and lead her by the hand instead. My lungs were burning sufficiently enough that I considered giving up there and then, but I endured it.

“Sorry… Fooh—haah! I’m really not… Hah, not made for that—!”

“I doubt it would’ve a difference, even if you carried me the whole way. The spell didn’t tire me at all.” She noted blankly as she overtook me.

“Bast—Gah! Then why didn’t you say so? C’mon!”

“…I didn’t want to.”

At the very least, she was still the same her as always. We still had a short distance to cover, so I wasted not my breath to chastise or banter with her, instead focusing fully on running. It aided us that none of the gates in our way had posed an obstacle. They hadn’t been opened to allow passage, but their steel crosswork had been melted through like wax under candlelight, leaving gaping holes surrounded by bent, drooping steel bars. We slipped past the openings burned into the fourth gate, and finally got the chance to survey the scene we were chasing.

“Bowmen!! Load your bows and fire!!! Skewer it! Ground it so I can tear its heart out!! Pierce through its bones!!! Leave it hopeless and squirming in the dust!!! If this damned beast thinks it can make a mockery of me, I’ll gouge its throat out and rip it into shreds!!!!” The piercing screams of a woman swallowed by madness rang out like hateful thunderbolts. She roared over and over—a bellowing avalanche of force splitting forth from bloodied lips, and an occasional slow exhale as she caught unsteady breaths—heating and distorting the air. She stood hunched over like a beast, a clear contrast to what should’ve been her countenance. Indeed, she was dressed like knightly royalty; her shoulders were fortified with jagged armour; her legs and arms hidden behind heavy gauntlets and greaves. She wore dense, hanging fabrics and glistening metals; instead of a crown she boasted mighty, curved horns; a serpentine tail slithered from her back; and above it were proud, kingly and tremendous wings. Or so they used to be before they'd been broken. Their structure had been twisted and snapped in several places, the left wing so damaged it barely remained attached at the base. Near some of their spined tips, scales had been pulverised into stringy, bloodied pulp, and the membrane torn away.

“Fire!! Send it to hell!!!” With a half-slain force of maybe twenty men, she fought a hideous monster, truly revolting and savage. It had the height of three to four men, half of which comprised its upright but quadrupedal body. Between its front and hind limbs there stretched a thick flap, and what could be considered its arms formed a V-shape so that the tips could meet the shoulder, the inner sides of it conjoined by another membrane, and claws erupting from the ‘elbows.’ Most strikingly, it had a neck as thick and long as its entire torso, ending in a head almost vestigial next to its terrifying beak, so large it could swallow a man whole, and so sharp it could tunnel through a mountain. Its eyes were entirely alien. Without fear, joy or malice, it cawed out a mimicry of laughter as several arrows failed to breach its hairy flesh, before skittering forward with insectoid movements up to one of the archers. For each of its strides, a human would have to make five. The man had no chance of escape. This creature—the Witch Eater—brought down its beak as an instrument of murder, pulverising his head and disconnecting his shoulders from a spine ground to mist. Two bloody heaps collapsed into a pile with synchronised splatters. This time I couldn’t hold it back… I retched and threw up a puddle of bile.

“Enough!! Damn you!!! Damn you all!!!” The madwoman roared again. “You were meant to die fighting the Galeans!! To claim my birth-right!!! This is absurd, utterly absurd!! When did I give you the permission to die fighting some nameless whore of a witch or this—this damnable bird?!!”

Her expression contorted into a mask of pure spite, so hideous I would struggle to call it human. She stomped her feet into a wide, aggressive stance, spreading out her arms as if waiting to be smitten down by the gods. In her eyes there gleamed a single, burning tear… not in a poetic sense but truly as a drop of searing fire. Then I saw the earth around her melting. Insanely large spider-webs had opened in the stone with her brutish stomp, and the pebbles and stray rocks scattered by this fracture poured in as their structure turned liquid from the heat of her witchcraft, forming a massive, glowing sigil. In spite of its barbaric creation, the runes and shapes comprising it were masterfully clean. Spreading impossibly wide, as if to claim the whole of the Earth before cooling, they were the work a mighty, proud and majestic witch…

The Avenging Dragon Witch—an inheritor of ancient Qiyin blood—whom the world had declared as our enemy.

Sensing the sudden influx of mana, the Witch Eater’s uncanny head lolled flat against the side of its body, so that it could get a good look at its most desired prey. With more of its bone-chilling laughter, it straightened its neck again and lunged. Two men of the dragon’s retinue attempted to block its advance, but they were skewered like dumplings on a stick on the animal’s beak, which reaped them like a scythe mowing through the grass, only to face the sky and pry itself open—bathing us all in a torrential downpour of guts, limbs and blood. My brain had no time to even think of something as childish as covering Laionne’s eyes, but I was still more appalled for her sake than mine. However, the witch next to me stood still like a stone. While I was busy wiping the sick off my chin, she merely observed. How could she keep herself from shaking? What allowed her to remain so undisturbed? She was kind, and that kindness should’ve been stirred into fear or disgust. Yet she had also made a resolution. Staying true to one’s feelings requires more strength than anything in the world; I suppose that’s why she could aim her staff without unease or doubt, and blasted off a bolt of cerulean flame straight at the monster’s centre of mass. Unfortunately, the attack had no chance of reaching its target. It crashed and dispersed against the clawed gauntlet of the Dragon Witch, who had caught it with an almost involuntary jerk of her arm. The glance she shot Laionne in response to her intervention was dangerously antagonistic. It must’ve made her madder than even the slaughter of her men; the hateful glare of her serpentine eye and the inhuman frown of her lips delivered us a warning, “Don’t you dare interfere.” Getting a closer look, I also noticed numerous burn scars disfiguring the visible spots of her flesh, and gemstone-like orbs embedded in a set of ten rings worn over her gauntlets, which must’ve acted in the place of a true staff.

“Hungry for leftovers, are you..?” She muttered under her breath, twisting her torso to meet the Witch Eater engulfing her in its shadow of gore. “Unlike them, you don’t even have the decency to grind my horns into seasoning… Hahaha..! Worthless cur!! Mother and sister had something to protect, but I have only my pride!!! So watch me..! Behold the might of the empress of dragons!!!”

As she made her declaration, the towering monster swung its bill like the tip of a pickaxe. With her ringed, taloned gauntlets, the witch somehow managed to catch it right before impact, grasping each half with another of her hands. Holding it in place, she met the beast’s eyes with a gaze as terrible as its own. Its raw strength should’ve been pushing her back. However, similarly to Laionne’s trick from earlier, her feet had been swallowed up by a splotch of molten earth which had since re-hardened, and so the monster’s push only succeeded in bending her spine into a straighter posture. In a bid to renew its assault, the Witch Eater attempted to pry its beak free of her gauntlets, but the witch wouldn’t budge, and her claws had bored their way through the hard keratin to prevent escape. She pulled it lower.

“What’s wrong? Are you afraid, perhaps?” She whispered to it soothingly. “Are you learning the fear of being hunted? Hah… Hahah! Allow me to show you what it’s like… to be butchered, to be denied your rightful place and murdered like an animal!! Now, I can’t make you vomit up the property you’ve eaten, but I can make sure you’ll never gorge again.”

There came a shrill, suffocated shriek from the depths of the Eater’s maw. It couldn’t open its beak to voice its suffering, but such a thought wasn’t very pertinent, because new avenues… or—to be less euphemistic—holes were being melted into it from the inside. The gemstones on the witch’s rings blazed a searing orange, and in response to her rage, veins of powerful heat started flowing through the hardened flesh and bone she had latched onto. They tunnelled through it like butter. While the surface of the beak sometimes flared with brief surges of flame, the real damage came from that pulsating heat spreading like the roots of mould. The keratin melted around it, followed by the bone, until the bird-creature’s mandibles turned all droopy, hollowed out and soft. As entire chunks of its bill began sloughing off as dollops resembling lava, the Witch Eater thrashed and contorted in place, but the witch refused to let go. It hopelessly attempted to swipe with its claws, but immediately found that its own limbs had been melded to the ground during its panic. With an almost fetishistic reverence, the Dragon Witch raised its liquefying beak high above her head, and allowed the dripping magma to shower her freely, clinging to her as it landed. It sizzled and steamed, but she didn’t wince in pain. Eventually, everything up to the base of the Eater’s neck had been melted away, and the limp, headless body collided with the stone. The witch delighted for a long while in the burning rivers flowing down her face.

“Now, you… Who the hell are you?” She stretched her arms, then with a bony snap her neck, tearing her feet free from the ground. She regarded us with a bemused grin, before introducing herself. “You stand in the noble presence of Tian’fu, the dragon empress of all you see before you. My ancestors burned this chasm into the earth, and now I have arrived to reclaim it. Hehe… haha! Their bones were not offered the dignity of burial, but I’m sure they’re here somewhere… groaning in the rotten stomachs of the skeletons littered in the lowest layer. Are you here to fawn over my ascension?”

“Dragon?” Laionne tilted her head, at quite frankly a terrible time for one of her deliberations. “No, you stand on two legs, as all Qiyu do. That makes you a wyvern.”

“Someone’s ought to teach you when to keep your condescending mouth shut, Ashen-bitch.” She warned with far more spite and resentment than she’d ever showed for the Witch Eater.

“It was an idle observation.” Laionne’s expression hardened. She assumed a cautious stance, staff at the ready. “Heed my warning. The Church of Excision has branded you an enemy, and we have been dispatched to dispose of you. Yet sacrilegious as it may be, I have never pledged my allegiance to any church or country, and my wishes are entirely my own. For that reason I ask you… what will it take to make you back down?”

“The Church..? The Church, ahh…” She repeated to herself, as if that was the only thing she’d heard. “So you’re my Galean welcome. Sweet… How sweet! Hahaha! Fuhahahaha!! Finally!!”

As she cackled in an uproar, the remaining seven men of her retinue crowded around her. There were four archers and three soldiers bearing swords. The former made a line behind their empress, aiming their bows without being given a command, while the latter slowly started circling around us, waiting for the opportunity to strike. On the other hand, Tian’fu seemed intent on enjoying her theatrics, continuing to speak.

“You wish to know how to make me rescind my claim? Not even in death shall you pry it from my soul. Mother told me—Sister told me too—that I would restore the glory of our dynasty. Even as they slaved away… we smiled and laughed, and we ate our shitty rations together. Sometimes, they would sneak down a handful of berries and risk getting punished. For me! Because it made me happy! Their embrace!! Their promises!!! Do you have any idea what it’s like to watch the people who love you get used, whipped and eaten like cattle?!”

“No. I’m sorry, I do not.” Laionne responded matter-of-factly. “That person is still here, right beside me.”

I blushed, but said nothing. Instead, I began covertly scratching a small sigil into the ground with the butt of my staff, trying to collect my breathing as best as I could. Laionne was unaffected by the danger, and so I tried to be as well.

“However,” she spoke to our adversary, “for a long time I had no-one of the sort. I spent day and night staring up at the clouds, swallowed by a sea of flowers that shone the blue of loneliness… At that time, I alternated between cursing myself and the world. I went as far as to wonder if perhaps my curse and hexensign were born as a punishment for the Earth and its people, rather than myself…

…Until Niccolina came to me. She set my Heart alight with a different destination, because her presence made that lonely garden of cerulean blossoms a sight I longed to see. With a sense of trepidation, I could lower my gaze at those flowers instead of the sky—nay, I could look at her in their stead—and have a reason to correct the motion of the Heavens, rather than fill myself with emptiness. I wish to set you on that path as well.”

The Dragon Witch laughed, as if suffering a devastating insult at the hands of a court jester.

“Wahahahaaah?! Are you gloating over me? Is that what you’re doing?!”

Gulping, I slammed my heel into the middle of the sigil I had carved; just in time to hear manic, slithering words sneaking past her lips.

“Skewer them.”

There boomed several loud blasts as a bubble of red energy enveloped the two of us. Unlike the Princely Witch, I couldn’t reverse the momentum of oncoming enemies like a mirror, but I could repulse them in my own way—by obliterating their weapons in explosions of vengeance. Laionne had said such a beautiful thing about me… and so I would protect her at all costs. The arrows of the bowmen were obliterated by the rapidly fading barrier, as were the swords seeking to do my lady harm. My witchcraft disintegrated them all into dust. The power of the barrier had even sent a few fingers flying loose of their hosts, but that was the cost of their rudeness and impudence, and much needed neutralisation to equalize the battlefield. They would survive. Dispersing my volatile shield, I employed the chaos and the confusion of the archers who had lost sight of their targets, wasting no time in dashing backwards and swinging my staff in a horizontal arc. This released a beam of whistling energy, exploding on impact with the four enemies standing in a line. The archers were knocked down squirming. Only Tian’fu, who had protected herself with her gauntlets as before, had managed to keep her balance.

“Useless idiots, not even worthy of being my slaves.” She lamented, hand smacked against her forehead. “Very well. I shall challenge you myself, you… hrm. That’s right, I never allowed you to introduce yourselves. Go on.”

“She is Niccolina, the companion I have described…” Laionne nodded at me. “…and I am Laionne, the strongest witch who will ever live. I shall entertain you until you deign to reconsider.”

“You really are one gloating bastard!” Her outburst seemed hypocritical, but she did have a talent that must’ve gone unquestioned up until her fight with Ayenna. Had I been alone, I doubt I could’ve taken her on. She stomped her feet apart and smashed her gauntlet into the rock beneath them, and with an incinerating flicker, mana travelled from her rings into the massive spider-web sigil, which had stretched all the way from the gate behind us to the one in front. Pillars of flame so tall they reached the surface erupted in hundreds of spots along the sigil at random intervals, forcing us to weave between them or be overwhelmed. We scampered around like headless chickens. Sweat dripping down our brows from the unbearable heat, our stamina quickly drained as the jets of fire refused to stop flaring, like a twisted game of endless, lethal hopscotch.

“L-Lai-o! Are you okay?!” I called out to her, unable to see her through the hazy inferno.

“Yes. I shall end this at once.” Evidently, she had grown tired of skipping. Following a flash of blue, I saw her lifting off into the air, and with her staff glowing cool above her head, she reached with curled fingers towards the wyvern below. Her hand proceeded to snap into a fist around nothing. The next second, something like translucent, blue shackles coiled around Tian’fu’s ankles and wrists, binding her and prying her arms away from the ground, forcing them locked in front of her stomach. The pillars subsided right away. Only in the subsequent calm did I notice a throbbing at my right leg, skin burning intensely enough to drag me to my knees. In place of a stocking there bloomed splotches of charred skin, giving off a ghastly, blood-curdling smell. I couldn’t move through the pain.

“Niccolina!” Laionne landed in front of me, shielding me with her back. She reeled her hand towards her shoulder, as if pulling on a bundle of tense strings, causing Tian’fu’s manacles to constrict. The proud Dragon Witch naturally fought against them, but even when her raw strength allowed her to push back against the pressure a little, Laionne merely summoned a second set of shackles, and then a third, making a stacking tower of her extremities.

“Cease your struggle, or I shall weaken you with more than cuffs.” Laionne warned.

“Hooh? Is this how the strongest witch fights? Pathetic..! How lowly and pathetic!! Why don’t you come at me and fight me claw-to-fist? Ha… haha! Let’s gouge each other’s eyes out!! Release me you coward!!!”

“Hmh. Stay there for a while.” Laionne dismissed her entirely, instead spinning on her heel and lowering herself before me. She tapped her staff against my wounded shin, fist still pointed and restraining Tian’fu, and healed me as she had always done. At least she attempted to, and while some of the suffering had indeed been alleviated, she was forced to turn back in the middle of her spell, for the prisoner she had caught proved more unruly than expected. With a thunderous snap, two out of three sets of shackles broke apart and vanished. I noticed Laionne’s breathing growing unsteady… and even a drop of blood trickling from her nose.

“You gave me a spook, but what’s this? Your witchcraft fluctuated just now, didn’t it? Tsk!! What’s wrong?! Are you so mighty that your flesh rejects your gift? Aah, I suppose you did insinuate that. Or maybe you’re just full of shit.”

Tian’fu overwhelmed her shackles for just a split second, yet in that time managed to punch her fist through the air. Five spears of flame shot out from her rings, all poised to ram into and skewer Laionne, or maybe they were long enough to impale us both at once. The Ashen Witch waited for them calmly. As they rocketed towards her one after another, she met each with the orb of her staff, and upon contact, they all met the same fate. Bouncing off into a spin, the flame of the spears turned a blinding blue, and their trajectories settled into an arc over her shoulders. They hovered there momentarily, before tipping and flying back from whence they came. With sickening hisses and followed by the stench of burnt flesh I’d grown to know against my will, they ripped through Tian’fu’s hands, feet, and one through her shoulder, pinning her down like a mounted butterfly. Then Laionne’s hand balled into a fist again, and all three sets of shackles returned. She coughed violently. However, even as a sputter of blood painted her lips, Tian’fu found no new purchase against her. The Qiyu had been forced into a kneeling, prostrating bow, a single arm extended as if reaching for salvation in the earth… but in her spirit she still towered proud.

“Kheh… haha! Hey, want to know a secret..?” She whispered just loud enough for us to hear. Smiling, she rubbed her cheek on the stone the way one might against a pillow.

“I’d rather hear surrender,” Laionne shot back.

“There’s people… lots of people living in these rocks, hiding away in the chasm. You’re a goody-two-shoes, so it may interest you to know. Fuhaha..! Little cockroaches, after everything they did… See, they think they were betrayed by the kingdom. They were so proud of their achievement—enslaving the Qiyu—and believed they should be treated like heroes for it. But the mine quickly dried up… the mine that Mother and Sister were sacrificed for dried up like nothing!! So Galeas recalled the soldiers and stopped sending rations. Most of those miners had nowhere to go after wasting their money settling here… They’d even sold their homes to make this atrocity a reality..! So most died, but some survived on the lower layers. There’s water there—fungus, moss and critters you can eat. So they survived and cursed the kingdom for abandoning them all…”

She laughed like a deranged, hopeless maniac bemoaning their defeat. However, there was a sense of giddiness and joy to her cackling, which intensified further as she laboured painfully to dig her gauntleted fingers into the ground.

“Laionne! That massive sigil—!” I called out.

“—Calm yourself! There is no need to oppose me any further.” Laionne reprimanded her, but her chastisement fell on deaf ears. “If you become a mere impurity, you can never hope to live again.”

“Oppose you..? Ha… Fuhahaha!” Tian’fu slammed her forehead against the stone, chipping off the protruding tips of her horns. “I couldn’t care less about you!! Weren’t you listening at all?! You self-centred, arrogant brat..! I’m going to flood this shithole with my lava, fry every last one of them!! Then I’ll swallow the land in it like a raging volcano!!! Death in fire is my dynasty!! For Mother! For Mother!! For Mother and Sister—just like they wanted!!!”

“Alas… I heavily doubt you’ve realized their wish.”

“…What the hell would you know of the wishes of others, you repugnant little bitch..?” Hacking out another curse, Tian’fu grinned and channelled so much mana that her body convulsed in response, pouring it out from her rings into the vast sigil marking the floor as far the eye could see. This net she had cast blazed with molten stone as it had upon its creation, and the width of each line began expanding as the depth and volume of lava increased. From the very start… she must’ve intended this outcome. I found myself clutching my burns on a small island between the branches of the web, which itself shrunk with every passing second. Just like when she had melted the Witch-Eater’s beak, the sigil’s roots had probably burrowed deep under the surface, and so the span of this layer from gate to gate would become a lake of molten lava ready to pour down the bottom of Culanngor. If anyone truly lived there, they would all die… as would I if the spider-web reached me. The heat it emanated was tremendous. Already from a distance of several paces, it caused the fibres of my clothes to combust into fleeting sparks of fire, eating small holes into them and threatening to ignite entirely. The knocked-out archers had been far unluckier. Lying close to the tighter-knit epicentre, they wouldn’t again open their eyelids—charred black by hungry flame. Very fast, I felt the ground bobbing like a boat upon water.

“Niccolina…” Laionne called out to me from the closest island of the doomed archipelago. “Raise your defence again, as much as you can. This is not a request. I shall… send us to the Cerulean Plane.”

“H-Hold on! You’re going to do what..?” I protested.

“Trust me, please.”

Able to very physically sense the urgency of our predicament, I held back my questions and took a deep breath. In a sense, it was the most important spell I had ever devised, a spring-board launching me into a new life away from the swamps… On the other hand, I had very much conceived of it as ‘Anti-Laionne Defense.’ To shield myself from her uncontrollable radiation, I had developed a low-maintenance film that covered every inch of my skin, destroying mana radicals on contact through a vaporising reaction. It was tuned perfectly to cause ‘annihilation.’ More specifically, it could only annihilate mana sourced from the Cerulean plane, unless I purposely overfed it with my own, which would cause it to go haywire and burn away anything that approached me. Theoretically, staying in the Cerulean plane wouldn’t be too dangerous on its own—ether only becomes harmful when ‘ingested’—however, if someone were to cast a spell while inside it… that’d be like lighting a match in a cave full of explosive gas; a case of ignited fuel coming into contact with a far larger reservoir. With a gulp, I did as Laionne had asked, hiding myself within a crimson pyre.

“Then, let us travel together—to the place of my rebirth.” Laionne clapped her hands together, letting her staff and Tian’fu’s shackles disappear, though the madwoman didn’t register the change. She thoughtlessly kept her power pouring into that monstrous sigil, so single-mindedly she had failed to notice how the jewels on her rings had fractured and cracked. To interrupt her suicidal ritual, Laionne raised her intertwined fingers high above her head—then with an after-trail of mana, she spread her arms open like a pair of flapping wings. Her staff re-appeared in front of her chest, and, moved solely by her will… it embedded itself in her heart like a key inside a lock. This self-violation didn’t go without a blood spill. From the staff sticking out of her wound, an outburst of blue light devoured my vision, nearly blinding me in spite of my curtain of red. I felt myself losing my physicality; first the residual pain in my leg faded away, then the heat of the lava. In an instant that somehow stretched on for eternity, gone was the caress of idle wind, the light of the Moon or the ambient sizzling. When the sense of sight finally returned to me, we were awash in a sea of pure ether.

“Whoah…”

I was completely dumbfounded. Even now I struggle to describe it.

It was as if we were endlessly falling with our feet towards the sky, yet not moving at all. Our heels faced a perfect, blue sky, and an infinite ocean stretched over our heads. Neither had a beginning nor an end in either dimension. My mind became overwhelmed right away by this illusion of falling while suspended in stillness, so much so that I nearly vomited again, though I forcefully contained myself, simply because I didn’t want to expose this dense, spine-zapping realm to any reactive excretions. Between every blink of my eyes, lightning strikes larger than anything I’ve ever seen tore through the horizon at an incalculable distance. Yet, what captivated me the most… were the thousands of lights resembling blossoms, herded along like they were floating on a breeze, fluttering in lazy spirals. They were… Yes, I’m certain. They were the same flowers growing in the courtyard of our castle. I didn’t know for how long I could maintain my raised barrier, but for the time being, it annihilated any rogue petals nudging into me. Had it been anything less than ‘annihilation,’ I would’ve already set off a chain reaction.

“Haah..! Nh…” My eyes shot instinctively to a barely suppressed groaning. Laionne hovered not too far from me, in an incomparably worse state. The haemorrhaging of her chest wound should’ve been leaking scarlet blood, but instead it’d been engulfed by snaking tendrils of bizarrely dense flame, so bright they took on the whiteness of snow under a mid-day Sun. Her hair similarly blazed like a pyre, its sheer volume calling back to the sack of potatoes I’d excised in her childhood from her scalp. Smaller, bluer fires swirled from her extremities and the dried blood on her face, and the atmosphere around her distorted in turn—crackling and shaking unsteadily, ready to implode. Her eyes were engulfed by a deep, azure brilliance… so enchantingly vivid they stole my breath away. In the entirety of the universe, she could be the only one to rightfully claim the title of master of this realm. Yet, without pride or the revelry of triumph, she stood as calmly and collected as ever, withstanding pain that would’ve toppled any other. She addressed the Dragon Witch, a lowly pest against the grandeur of her power.

“I offer you welcome to what colours the Heavens. Waste not any more of your effort, practicing witchcraft here would be your undoing—doubly so in your state. By summoning you here, I hope I delivered my intended message. I am no longer asking you to calm your fury.” She declared with all the poise and intensity of a monarch. Even then, however, she had no wish to strike Tian’fu down. Forceful or not, she still sought an answer different from murder.

“Fuh… Hahahahaah?! You… What the hell have you done..?” The Dragon Witch glanced wildly around. Unlike Laionne, all of her wounds had been cauterized shut, so the only thing igniting on occasion was the drool and spit flying from her mouth. “You think… Do you think you’ll humble me now? Youuu damn wretch!! You filthy, detestable, loathsome—!!!”

“—Do not. My wish can still include you.” Laionne chided. “Your will, your fate… It doesn’t have to end here.”

“How many times do I have to fucking tell you?!!” She roared. Assuming the stance of a cornered animal, the broken gemstones in her rings attempted to spark without success. “I don’t care!! I don’t care about you!!! All I want!! All I want to do is—!!!”

With a final, throat-crushing howl, Tian’fu broke into a leap towards Laionne. She soared amidst the petals—her nobility disgraced, her wings tattered, her rings and armour cracked apart—she soared, a beast of wounded pride, rage, stolen purpose… and for the first time I saw through her façade the tears of a child in despair. This child longed to be happy, for its mother’s lost embrace…

But that wish was denied, and so it could only call out hopelessly.

“Burn them all away!!! Every last one of them deserves to die!!!!”

. . .

“Then I must become selfish, from now until death.”

Laionne did nothing more than exhale through her lips. Her breath travelled on the currents of ether, crackling with lightning, before settling into a barely visible ball resembling the orb of her staff. Carefully, methodically, she brought her hand up to it, forming a flat circle with her index and thumb. Then… she flicked it with her finger.

In that instant, a pillar of cerulean light swallowed everything in front of her. There was no drama or morbid poetry to Tian’fu’s death. Like an insect swatted away, once the beam of light subsided… she simply wasn’t there anymore, not a sign of her existence. Were it not for this record, I suppose that her entire personhood would’ve been erased in that moment. Every last particle.

Could it be called mercy? Could such a death without remembrance be considered human at all? Thoughts like that occurred to me, but ultimately they had no bearing on reality. This girl had doomed herself by refusing reason. She wouldn’t negotiate or seek a compromise with us, so we had no choice but to choose our own survival. But… could we make the same choice against the World itself? If the Church; if Roue Galeas; if every human on Earth declared that we were villains, would it be right to decide the same thing? I had no idea at the time, so the only decision I could make… was to support Laionne, until we found the answer. Yes—we, together. Because we had always reinforced each other… and alone we would come undone, just like the Dragon Witch.

I saw her consciousness fading. Laionne’s brilliant eyes fluttered shut, and as easily as they did, we were flung out of the Cerulean Plane. I’m not sure if we fell or not, but the blue around us shattered and spat us out onto the first layer of Culanngor where we had been. I went to her and cradled her body.

The rest of that night offered us little respite.

Rest Easy, My Cerulea