At The End of Duty

Quiet sobs filled the crystal palace’s halls. Reinhardt settled Elaine’s body against the wall near the staircase as he was determined to get her back out of the dungeon to have a proper burial.

Priscilla was sitting against the wall on the other side of the entrance with the fire crackling near her feet.

Her muscles ached, the arrow lodged in her left arm made its muscles throb, her heart felt heavy. It was a series of things happening at once that made her question it.

‘Is my father’s life more important than those trying to save him…?’

She looked at Reinhardt, who hadn’t moved ever since he clasped his trembling hands together. Though his prayers should have finished by now, he was still there. Existing.

Priscilla turned her attention back to the campfire, the ash accumulating on the floor was starting to sink into the ground as if it was being absorbed by the dungeon. She didn’t want to acknowledge it. Instead she reached for the inside pocket of her jacket to check on the time, but the pocket watch Elaine carried was now cracked and its hands didn’t move.

“Five…”

She muttered to herself. She wasn’t sure whether that was five in the evening or morning. Time didn’t seem to have meaning in a place like that. Nothing had.

Her flesh pulsated where the arrow was lodged, it was a slow, painful sensation that spread throughout the rest of her body that made it difficult for her to rest. Sleep did not come for her.

Instead she chose to stand up and walk over to the dead simulacrum. After kicking it over, she regretted doing so.

Its face was similar to the last imitation, but with a key difference. It had a smiling mouth, not where a human would, but where the nose should have been instead. Priscilla swallowed hard as she kneeled to search its pockets.

Inside them, there were only a few empty glass vials and throwing daggers, none of which would help her. She grabbed the corpse by its collar and shoved it towards the middle of the room—far away from them.

With eventual tired steps, she returned to her spot beside the campfire.

“Father…” She uttered with a quiet voice. “Why… why have you come to this place…?”

Her head was pounding with pain and her vision was blurring. Not before long, she passed out while sitting up. The fire crackled, the dungeon remained silent, and the sobbing never stopped.

Back at the inn, Rionara was still practicing what she had learned from Reinhardt in the backyard.

The morning of Radiance was cold. It reminded Rionara of the very first encounter she had with Priscilla a little more than a week ago.

Amidst each swing, a growing smile from remembering the good times she had with the knight. It was brief, could barely be called a living, but for all it was worth, it was Rionara’s most fond memory in eighteen years of her life.

“Rio. Breakfast is ready.”

The familiar stern, yet kind voice rang somewhere behind her as she replied.

“Coming.”

She let the blade move first, then stepped to the side of the pell, her hips twisting as the longsword swept through in a clean horizontal slash, its edge biting into the cloth of her target. The resistance was right. She smiled to herself before sheathing the sword.

After cleaning the dirt off her boots, she headed inside and grabbed a towel Karla left for her.

The inn’s hall was empty save for a very familiar face who was waiting for her usual breakfast.

“Miss Lucina.” Rionara greeted with a polite bow. “Welcome. I assume you being here in the morning means…”

“Yes, it’s the usual.”

“Very well, I’ll go fetch your food.”

She barged back into the kitchen.

“Uncle Gerolt. Lucina’s here.”

“Who are you calling ‘uncle’ Lass? I ain’t old enough to be your dad.” He looked over his shoulder with furrowed brows. “I’m working on it, just go talk to her or something. I’ll call you when it’s ready.”

Rionara giggled playfully before returning to the hall and taking a seat across the table from Lucina. As she did so, the receptionist’s expression softened a bit as she asked.

“Rio, are you sure you want to become an adventurer?”

“Yup. It’s the best way for me to learn the ropes. Besides, I…” She glanced at her hands that were on the table for a brief moment before chuckling softly. “...she wouldn’t want me to cling to her all the time. I need to find my own path if I want to stand beside her.”

“Your own path…”

Lucina uttered under her breath. She became silent for a while after that. Her eyes stayed on Rionara’s figure.

‘How can a child like yourself be so strong…?’ Her heart ached. ‘This world is full of pain and suffering, yet you can still smile like that.’

She closed her eyes and curled her lips slightly inwards.

‘You and him… you two are strong beyond this world.’

“What’s wrong, Miss Lucina?”

Rionara’s voice snapped her out of it as she forced a smile.

“Nothing, I was just thinking about the paperwork waiting for me once they return. You must be excited.”

The high elf smiled and nodded.

“I finally got the hang of what Priscilla taught me with Reinhardt’s help. I think I can hold my own if it’s against a weak monster or two.”

“It’s good to be optimistic but don’t let it make you careless.”

Rionara tapped against her own chest twice as she smiled.

“I’ve learned to be more careful the hardest way. You won’t have to worry about me.”

Lucina was about to say something else but Gerolt’s voice rumbled from the kitchen.

“Oi, Lass! I got her breakfast ready, can you come get it?”

“Coming, uncle Gerolt.”

“I ain’t your uncle!”

With a confident smirk, Rionara gave Lucina a brief wave of her hand as she went to the kitchen. The receptionist interlocked her own fingers as she rubbed one thumb over the other with apprehension.

“I pray for your success, Priscilla…”

With a quiet prayer, she closed her eyes and lowered her head.

Rionara got inside the kitchen and a large wooden tray of food was set on the counter.

“Are you sure you can handle it?”

He asked with worry.

“Yeah, no problem. The training forced me to move a lot so I’m quite confident in my strength.”

“Just don’t overdo it, alright?”

“Got it.” She got her arms beneath the wooden tray and lifted it with her legs. With a smile on her face, Rionara said to him, “See? I got it.”

As she left the kitchen, a thought stopped her in her tracks.

‘Maybe this time I can get Jean to fix her jacket.’

But that would never come to pass.

Priscilla snapped awake with half a breath stuck in her throat.

“Argh…”

It was hard to breathe, the heat on her left arm was agonizing and her head felt like it was being banged up by hammers.

Her instinct was to look beside her. Reinhardt was laying down with his back on the stairs, still alive from what she could see his armor moving subtly with each of his breaths. She swallowed hard before uttering.

“Reinhardt.”

There was a moment of quiet. No response.

“Reinhardt.”

A few more seconds passed, but nothing.

“Reinhardt!”

Only when she shouted his name, he deemed it worth giving his response with a slow turn of his closed helmet. She could see the glint in his tired eyes through the visor.

“What is it?”

“How… how long have I been out?”

He shook his head.

“I don’t know. I was sleeping as well.” He slowly sat up with the help of his sheathed longsword. “This floor is too quiet. Especially for one that has the bull-man.”

Priscilla inhaled hard, the pain in her left limb was becoming harder to ignore. She clenched her teeth for a while before turning to him.

“Do you still have water?”

“We should still have.” He grabbed the rucksack and dragged it across the tile floor until it was between them. “We also have… too many arrows.”

She followed his gaze briefly. The abandoned quivers were now serving as fuel to the crackling campfire.

Priscilla attempted to ignore that fact, but Elaine’s death was still too fresh in her mind. The mere thought was enough to take her back to when she held the elf in her arms as she died. It left a bitter taste in her mouth.

Eventually, she found the waterskin and gulped its contents down as if she was trying to remedy the pain. It didn’t go away but her thirst did.

She packed it back in the rucksack and forced herself to stand up. The body of the simulacrum was still just a few meters away from them where she had tossed it before. The way back up the stairs was also empty and Elaine’s body was still just how Reinhardt left it.

Priscilla let out a tired sigh. She wasn’t hungry, but she should have been; she wasn’t crying, but she should have been; she wasn’t despairing, but she should have been.

That liminal space between grief and duty kept her body going. Despite her wounds she felt if there was only one more battle—she could still finish it, even if it cost her life.

She started to move, she didn’t know where to, but her body knew she had to do something or that hell would never come to an end.

“Where are you going, Priscilla?”

Reinhardt asked as he also got up.

“To finish this. I need to see with my own eyes why my father came to this place.”

He grabbed the shield he had left on the stairs and followed her quietly. Their footsteps echoed in the neverending horizon of crystals.

The pillars vanished into the darkness above them as if the ceiling was simply too tall or that it didn’t exist in the first place.

Despite each step not seeming to take them very far, Priscilla knew from instinct that it was close. The revelation was finally at hand.

It was then, after long minutes of walking, they finally reached it. The staircase.

It wasn’t like the others, there were no torches, no walls, just crystal steps leading downwards. And so she did. Her footsteps guided her to that place so she could finally put an end to it.

It didn’t take long, in fact, those sets of stairs were the shortest she ever had to climb. The fifth floor beneath wasn’t a courtyard, nor palace, nor maze. It was just a room. A room filled with crystals and a body hung against the wall.

Priscilla stopped for a moment as she recognized the body embedded into the crystals. Marcus Avellion, barely any clothes were left on his drying corpse. The only thing that allowed her to identify him was his hair and the spear he held on his left hand.

“No… you… you couldn’t have died…”

Her right hand tightened around the rapier’s handle. Her father was holding a prismatic gem the size of a melon, the Tears. She raised her weapon and shouted.

“Not for a damn relic!”

She tossed her blade and it hit the crystals before flinging back on the ground, clattering against the floor.

“Why?! Why did you leave the kingdom?! What was it all for?!”

She grabbed her rapier off the ground and walked up to the wall in order to hit the Tear, but as she was about to land a slam with the bellguard, she felt something was wrong. The world around her began to shift and turn—her mind was shattering from pain. In the blink of an eye, she was back on the fourth floor.

Priscilla looked around, anger still fueling her limbs as she was beginning to walk back to the fifth floor. But that time, something was different.

Footsteps echoed from the darkness. Distant in the endless darkness of the horizon, she could see a dark silhouette emerging from the veil. The face and horns of a bull, the arms and body of a man—the bipedal monstrosity held a battleaxe with both hands as it slowly stomped its way towards Priscilla.

Reinhardt put himself in front of her with his shield up. His presence only registered in her mind as she accidentally bumped into his back while trying to move forward.

The abomination in front of her was towering, at least four palms taller than her and its arm had the same thickness of her thighs. A brutal freak of nature.

“Stand in my way and you’ll wish you haven’t.”

She pointed her rapier at it and forcibly raised her left hand—a swirling ball of fire erupted on her palm.

“Priscilla, I’ll try to keep it at bay. You-”

“Fireball!”

Without wasting any time, she hurled an orb of flames directly at her opponent. But as it was about to land onto it, she heard an eerily familiar voice.

“Ice Wall!”

Ice erupted in front of the bull-man’s feet before exploding in a curtain of steam. Broken ice was thrown everywhere as both Priscilla and Reinhardt readied themselves. Just behind the towering freak, they both saw a blonde haired woman holding a staff.

Priscilla’s eyes widened in terror as she uttered under her breath.

“No… it… it can’t be…”