When Tristessa regained consciousness, her lips cracked, her mouth felt dry and dusty from the debris accumulated on the ceramic floor. A constant, high-pitched noise persisted in her ears, and in her eagerness to move, her arms remained unresponsive; one simply refused to move, and the other was limp, drained of strength. Something was crushing her legs, perhaps a piece of the table, since it wasn't impossible for her to move them.
"What... happened...?" she asked, her throat feeling raspy and sore. When the darkness cleared, it was all dust. Debris were scattered everywhere, once been part of the dining room walls and a piece of the ceiling. "Jin! Severus!"
Her scream was insignificant; she could barely hear it over the monotonous drone that continued to echo inside her head, but which was slowly fading away. What took its place soon were more exploding sounds and screams. Screams of pain, fury, and laughter.
Laughter filled with malice.
"Shit… Shit!" Tristessa cursed and coughed, twisting to free her legs from the weight of the table. She could only use her tired arm to drag herself along, as the other arm, in addition to not responding to her commands, had its shoulder in an odd position, and trying to move it hurt like thousands of red-hot pins were being stuck inside it. "Cough, cough… Come on!"
As she struggled to free herself, a loud, earth-shattering sound echoed everywhere; inside the house under attack, outside on the plains, inside Tristessa's head. Omnidirectional, reaching everyone and everything, an alarm the girl found frighteningly familiar with those sirens that on Earth announced a military attack.
"What the fuck…?"
And then, the siren was replaced by a powerful, male voice that, with the same transcendent power, delivered the following message:
"ATTENTION, ATTENTION! TO ALL CITIZENS OF THE EMPIRE OF THE NIGHT'S WATCH, ATTENTION, ATTENTION! DISCORD ACTIVITY HAS BEEN RECORDED AT DEGREES OF A POSSIBLE DIMENSIONAL SHIFT EVENT!"
"What?! A dimensional shift event…?" Tristessa didn't know what that was, but it didn't sound good at all. And if it was announced that way, what was coming was more than predictable:
"DUE TO THE UNPREDICTABLE NATURE OF SUCH EVENT, ALL IMPERIAL CITIZENS ARE STRONGLY REQUESTED TO SEEK REFUGE IN THE MAJOR CITIES OF ALL DOMINIONS, IN ALL SHIELD CITIES, AND IN EVERY AREA OF IMPERIAL TERRITORY THAT POSSESSES AN EVIL-WARDING PILLAR! I REPEAT, TO ALL CITIZENS OF THE EMPIRE OF THE NIGHT'S WATCH, DISCORD ACTIVITY HAS BEEN RECORDED AT DEGREES OF A POSSIBLE DIMENSIONAL SHIFT EVENT! ESTIMATED TIME OF ARRIVAL, FIFTEEN MINUTES! "
And to end the transmission, the voice prayed:
"STAY SAFE, ALL UNITED! FOR THE EMPIRE, ETERNAL SHIELD AGAINST THE NIGHT AND THE DARKNESS!"
All sound returned to normal; turmoil erupted in her ears once again, and Tristessa saw it as a signal to continue fighting. She needed to be free and understand the current situation before she could think about that worrying message about a dangerous event that was coming, in a countdown.
With a little more effort, the girl managed to free her legs and, gritting her teeth to resist the wave of pain that spread throughout her bruised body, stood up.
The dining room was in absolute chaos. Wood fragments continued to fall from the ceiling and the remaining pieces of the walls; shards of windowpane glass and the remains of the candlesticks were scattered across the floor. There was a lot of dust in the air that luckily the wind coming from outside was dispersing it relatively quickly.
That was why Tristessa managed to see into the front courtyard, where she spotted the elf, his torso naked and covered in blood oozing from fresh cut wounds.
"Severus!"
The mist of dust dissipated further, and the girl saw, with terror gripping her heart, that the blood elf was surrounded by almost ten individuals. All of them were women, wearing long black skirts and torn tunics whose pieces were at the mercy of the flow of the wind.
"Th-those...are...!" Tristessa, holding her dislocated arm, took several steps toward them and could see the savage state of the women, with tangled, untidy hair, or baldness; all of them were blindfolded and laughing. They continued to laugh, surrounding the elf and filled with diabolical intent. "Severus!"
Her cry was drowned out by the rain of thunder that fell from the skies, intent on striking the women. Some were struck by the lightning, resulting in electric arcs that killed them instantly, evaporating the blood in their veins and tearing off their legs or arms, while others dodged them with great agility, causing the thunderous impacts to leave scorched grass and earth in their place.
The invaders counterattacked, summoning blood glyphs that transmuted into spears of sinister beauty that flew dizzyingly toward Severus from various directions.
"Using thaumaturgical techniques of my people against me… Vile worshippers of the Dark Lady!"
The blood elf's cry was one of war. He swiftly made several gestures with his hands, tracing lines, points, and curves in the air with perfect precision. Spiritual energy, the cross-flow of the material and astral planes, surged forward like an invisible wave that reached Tristessa and shook her restless soul. Three spirals composed of glyphs appeared around Severus and, in the blink of an eye, collapsed into dozens of blood spheres that flew like bullets toward the spears, colliding mid-air and self-destructing.
"Argh…!"
But imminent defeat due to outnumbering was a golden rule on Earth, and Nekrom was no exception: a sinister spear managed to pass through the shower of crimson spheres and pierced Severus at the ribs, tearing off a good chunk of flesh and causing exposed fractures.
"NO! SEVERUS!" This time, Tristessa's scream reached the elf, who stumbled and was forced to press the grievous wound with one hand.
Still, he looked away, in her direction, and for the first time since she had met him that very day, Tristessa saw fear mingling with his boundless anger.
"Run away, kid! Find them and run! Seek shelter!"
That was all he managed to say before he was forced to move to avoid more bloody spears and sharp-tipped stone stalagmites that erupted from the ground.
Panic gripped Tristessa, preventing her from thinking clearly. The dusty smoke had been replaced by the black smoke of the flames that were spreading across the ceiling. The house was conspiring against them, turning into a death-trap with every passing second.
How had this happened? What kind of calamity had befallen them, and why? What had they done to deserve such a misfortune?
And what was coming, in that dimensional-shift event that was warned?
Time was running out for Tristessa, and for everyone in that house of dread.
"L-Lucahn!" The boy's name tumbled out of her mouth, and she looked in every direction, searching for him. The dining room was a wreck, but in the light provided by the growing fire, she could see that no one else was there. "LUCAHN!"
Limping, Tristessa made her way to the atrium: all the display cases were smashed, historical artifacts scattered everywhere, and the front door was hanging off its hinges.
There was blood, lots of it, staining the carpet next to the stuffed animals and trophies… Was it the blood of the Mercer-Archeos family members? Or the blood of those women… those witches?
"The Coven… It's them, it's them, they came!" the girl thought, her brain short-circuiting and lacking direction. She looked toward the kitchen entrance, toward the front door, toward the stairs. "…huh?"
The stair railings were stained with fresh blood, and…there was a severed hand clutching one of them.
A child's hand.
"Lucahn?"
Her mind couldn't accept it, and therefore she was unable to comprehend what she was seeing. Tristessa climbed the stairs and followed the trail of blood leading from that paralyzed hand.
"Lucahn?" she repeated, taking the first step on the second and seeing that the trail of blood led toward the bathroom.
An unpleasant sound of bashing against something wet and splashing came from inside, and a female voice, sweetly cruel, was singing:
"And the day came…
Pain that came to stay.
No more doubts, in the massacre, within the rotten mire…
No more morals, stagnating our fading souls.
Oh, the day came, the love of angels,
And the tears of the innocent.
Mother and children, sleep, sleep forever…"
Tristessa opened the bathroom door and blood flowed outside, crashing like waves against her feet. She saw the carnage inside, the unspeakable and unforgiving depravation, her mind broke into thousands pieces, and then she closed the door.
"L-Lucahn…Tiara…" As she turned to limp back downstairs, there were only tears in her eyes, vomit escaping from her mouth, and urine soaking her pants down to her ankles. "Ahh…ah…Lu…Lucahn…"
She entered the kitchen and saw chaos similar to that she witnessed during her second Death. Now the lamp at the center of the place turning on and off repeatedly, and casting its light of a deep red color, product of the blood that had been splashed all over it.
But the corpses of three witches were indisputably the main morbid attraction: one was a headless body, leaning against a shelf that was miraculously still standing; another was the smiling, soulless corpse of a bald woman whose chest had burst outward in a mess of entrails and blood splattered everywhere, as if something had exploded from behind her; and the third dead witch simply lay face down, with a hole in her head that kept oozing clear liquid mixed with slight reddish color.
"J-Jin…!" the girl muttered, finding the hunter up ahead, sitting with his back against the cupboard door. He was head down, his trench coat torn with deep cuts, and his tangle of blood-stained hair hiding his face. "Jin! JIN!"
Screaming his name didn't work, so she, crying and trying to hold back her sobs, walked over the rivers of blood flowing from the dead witches, heading toward him. With the trembling hand that still obeyed her, she lifted Jin's head.
And what she saw was his flayed face, eyeless and toothless, dripping blood continuously from various points of exposed muscle.
"Ahh...ah...ah..." Tristessa wanted to scream with all her might. She couldn't; the shock had left her there, immobilized and etching that dreadful scenario into her memories. And if that weren't enough, a deep, familiar dizziness took over her head. Her temples felt like they were on fire, and the world started to spin around her. "Argh!"
A dark influence flowed from within her, leaving her body as if she were exhaling heavy, stagnant air from a pair of nonexistent lungs. Jin's corpse moved, and from within its toothless, bloody mouth came a sinister sigh.
That terrifying Divinity, other that was not Dark Resurrection, had sprung into action.
"AHHHHH!" Now, Tristessa was able to unleash heart-rending screams. She fell to the ground on her back, supporting the weight with both arms and feeling the pain of her dislocated shoulder frying her brain. But she kept screaming, her body covering herself with the blood of the dead as she tried to get away from Jin's reanimated corpse, which was growling like an enraged beast and extending its right arm toward her. "NO, NO, NONONONO! STOP, PLEASE STOP!"
She tried to get up and run, but the blood flooding the floor made her slip. Now her mouth was stained with someone else's blood. Wet, sickening. The taste of Death.
"Grrr… Ahhrrr…"
An impossible voice, coming from the Abyss itself. Tristessa was about to lose what little sanity she had left; she could no longer listen to the man she held so dear, so unjustly murdered and so unjustly brought back like a ghoul. A revenant. A monster who shouldn't exist.
"Enough…enough…Stop, no more, enough." Blow after blow, Tristessa slammed her head against the stone floor. Her forehead, covered in foreign blood, opened up in a gash after several blows. The dizziness was brutal, and the pain, ineffable. But the unnatural influence she felt emanating from within her didn't stop. It seemed to continue, indefinitely. "Stop…"
"Arrr…Grrr…Uuuu…"
Finally, Jin's corpse fell silent and collapsed to the side, and simultaneously the headache and vertigo left Tristessa.
"Ahh…Uff," she breathed deeply, doing her best to get out of there, stepping over the dead witches as she dragged herself. "It hurts…Fuck…F-fuck!"
The self-inflicted blows were not without consequences: now that she could stand, she was forced to hold onto the walls to avoid falling, having lost all ability to maintain balance. The temperature was rising, she felt it in her hands…
"I must run away… Run away, yes, run away, run… Severus…" she whispered, heading for the entrance of the house. Smoke filled her lungs, the dizziness was terrible, and her consciousness threatened to fade. That transcendent warning that resonated everywhere left her more than uneasy; she had to get away as soon as possible, with Severus, and seek refuge, protection. "Save me, please. Save me…"
Outside, the cool night air gave her a second of respite from such adversity, but not enough to regain her balance. She barely managed to take a few steps before falling to her knees; she was tired… So tired…
Wiping her face with the back of her sleeve, Tristessa looked around and knew, her spirit collapsing like a house of cards, that there was no salvation: the entire burning house was surrounded by dozens upon dozens of witches, celebrating the arson and reveling in the carnage. Many lay dead, but in the end, Severus had been defeated, and they had immobilized him in the air, surrounding him with violet glyphs representing the elemental power of gravity.
"I feel Discord…"
"So much Discord."
"Suffocating Discord… Flooding, drowning, smothering…"
Amid laughter and giggles, the blindfolded women murmured among themselves.
"She… Yes, she…"
"Take her, yes, don't let her escape."
"The wait is over, and the holy hour is nigh. The Evil Dream is coming."
"As foretold by Lord Moebius…"
"The Book of Sin... Forbidden knowledge, unescapable future..."
Whispers upon whispers. All witches pointed their fingers at Tristessa. On her knees, surrendered, she knew her fate was sealed. The pieces of the chessboard had been wiped out in a couple of moves, by that dark, ominous group that served the Shadow Queen.
The witches of the Coven were heading toward her, the fire in the house turning them into giant shades looming over her. Up in the black skies, a red ethereal veil that covered hundreds of thousands of Imperial vistas, was falling upon everything, turning the fragile consistency of reality into a world of nightmares.
It was as if it were the end of the world, announced by that voice that echoed throughout the Dominion.
But Tristessa was not going to witness that chaotic-world shifting event.
She was going to die again.
She was going to die like Lucahn, Tiara, and Jin had, at the hands of that evil group of lunatics.
She was going to die watching Severus being destroyed by the very enemies he had sworn to eliminate in the name of his exterminated species.
"Triss…Tessa!"
She heard him bellow from his aerial prison, and for a brief second, their gazes met again: between frustration, perpetual woe, Tristessa saw determination in him. And she managed to read his lips:
"Hell is not for you."
With what little strength he had left, the blood elf managed to move his fingers, and a small crimson glyph appeared near the girl; the color of Severus's hair and all the blood that covered and dripped from his torso.
The glyph was addressed to her. Its beautiful ruby-like glow was dedicated to that young girl, who smiled before a thin line of blood appeared across her neck.
"It's…beaut…"
Her head was severed from her body. The world became a whirlwind of chaotic movements and colors that mingled with each other, eventually fading into darkness.
Tristessa Irandell had died for the third time. And with the sound of golden chains echoing in the void, she would return once more, to begin anew.