Tristessa felt as if a bucket of ice water had been emptied over her heart. Instantly, the photograph abandoned in the guest room—the photograph she had stared at for several nights, thinking of her benefactors' family—resurfaced in her memory, focusing specifically on that girl with black hair tied back in a bun.
Colorless and dirty, the details of the photograph had not been exponent of clarity, but Tristessa had no doubt that, straining to see that ruined face purged of its madness, the mysterious eldest daughter of Jin and Tiara was standing in front of them.
"Daiana..." she heard the pregnant woman murmur, with deadly venom suffused with that name and making her hostage feel conflicted emotions in her heart.
Now Tristessa understood much more. The puzzle pieces fell into place again, with implications far more terrible than she had imagined.
"W-why don't you introduce yourself?"
Daiana's question brought Tristessa back to her senses. For a brief moment, she had forgotten the situation she was in and had to experience again the fear of Death gnawing at her insides, blocking her lungs, and rendering her ability to speak useless.
"Why? Why?! Don't you want to? But I told you my name, out of courtesy, you should too… Weren't you taught manners? I want to know your name! Tell me, tell me, tell me! TELL ME, YOU UNGRATEFUL WHORE!" Daiana displayed a wide range of emotions in fractions of a second, from dismay at Tristessa's silence to an inhuman rage that made her clutch her own head. She began pacing, lines of blood running from the contact points of her fingers, and her bulging eyes trembled so much they seemed about to pop out of their sockets. "SOMEONE! Whoever it is, I need…I need…saving…!"
"Let me, Mistress!"
One of the witches quickly broke ranks and knelt near where Daiana was having her psychotic break, opening her arms and displaying absolute, blind benevolence in her tears.
"Witness me…!"
Her words were rudely interrupted when Daiana, in a fit of extreme anxiety, turned around and made a swift movement with her right hand as if slashing a sword, passing through the space occupied by her minion's head. In an instant, the top of her skull flew through the air, practically landing at Tristessa and Tiara's feet.
"Ah…ah, f-for God's sake…!" the girl gasped, staring with extreme nausea at that perfectly severed piece of skull from which blood and brains began to ooze outward, mixing with long brown hair, grass and mud. Then her fear-filled eyes shifted to the witch, whose hand was dripping fresh blood from her victim, who remained kneeling in the same place. "What kind of…?"
Her question, a product of disbelief and morbid curiosity about the witch's deadly ability, was not heard due to the chants of the Coven, gracefully celebrating the death of its member. She watched in complete horror as Daiana grabbed the dead witch's gaping head, which was spewing blood from every orifice, and bent down like a hungry Varg to devour what remained of her brains.
"Ugh, no!" Tristessa averted her eyes, unable to continue witnessing such an obscene spectacle of gore.
Unlike her, Tiara saw everything. She was unable to tear away her hate-filled gaze, focused exclusively on her daughter as if she were the worst enemy in existence. Her lower jaw trembled under the pressure of her teeth, until she finally opened her mouth and screamed:
"DAIANA! Don't use my family names again, you piece of rotten shit! Give me back my son!"
"…!"
Tristessa quickly glanced at her captor, while the excited witches shouted insults and curses at the disrespect shown their master.
But Daiana calmed the raging waters by raising a hand in search of silence. She stood up as she chewed the last rubbery, bloody piece of brain she stuffed into her mouth, and gave Tiara a mocking sneer that only fueled her unending anger.
"Don't be impatient, dear mother. You taught me that I must clean the plate…"
The Priestess ran her index finger over the inner walls of the corpse's skull and, now completely stained with blood, arbitrarily approached one of her devoted servants and inserted it into her mouth, earning the woman's fervor and the collective envy of those around her. As the witch licked her finger with erotic desperation, and tears of gratitude trickled from beneath the blindfold, Daiana glanced sideways at her mother in the distance.
"Or could it be that you're hungry too? It can't be easy living here, so far from the city... You've always been a woman of refined tastes, but it wouldn't be right to judge you for it. After all, I'm just like you. Like mother, like daughter, eh?"
"You're not my daughter. I didn't raise a monster like you!"
Releasing all the anger she'd been pent up for a decade, Tiara lied. Her words were deceits, even Tristessa could see that. Not only the ties of blood could not be cut, there was also pain in her words, manifested in hot tears that quickly moistened her face, a product of how deeply her firstborn had fallen from grace. For her sins, for her crimes, for how it broke her and her husband's hearts to know what the girl they had raised with so much love had become...
The past abounded with painful memories, and now, in the present, nothing remained but hatred and despair.
"By Xiliarra, I won't ask it again, witch!" Tiara warned, releasing Tristessa to use her newly freed hand to draw the single-shot pistol and point it at her daughter. "GIVE ME BACK MY MELLION, NOW!"
Chuckling with cruel intent, Daiana swiftly removed her finger from her minion's mouth, and in the next second, the witch's lower jaw separated from her head and it fell to the ground.
The Priestess ignored the confused witch, who soon went into shock and collapsed, fainting and starting to lose rapidly a critical amount of blood. Taking several steps toward her mother, she grabbed one of the many amulets hanging from small chains at the top of her skirt and unhooked it.
"Do you mean this?" she asked her mother, extending her arm so she could see the object held between her middle finger and thumb: it was a shrunken human head, with dried yellow skin and its orifices sealed with iron nails. Only its black hair had been perfectly preserved.
"What are you talking about?" the pregnant woman asked, not understanding the meaning behind that creepy little head. Unlike her, Tristessa, whose arms were still restrained behind her back, had perfectly understood that vile Priestess. It was a matter of accepting the tragic and unjust reality, something Tiara was going to have to do by force. "Who...?!"
"My little brother, don't you recognize him? Are you going senile or what?" the Priestess asked with clear disapproval, then brought the shrunken head close to her face and stroked it with her cheek as if it were a pet. "Of course I take my adorable Mellion with me everywhere. He's so cute and so obedient that I can't help but shower him with kisses!"
Firmly following her words, Daiana placed several kisses on her younger brother's head while Tristessa gaped at Tiara, who began to breathe heavily. The truth sinking in, causing the woman to lose her balance and fall to her knees, almost compromising the integrity of her belly.
Then her screams and cries broke the false serenity of the night, officially ending the calm before the storm.
And Tristessa? What could she do there but watch that broken woman and the Coven surrounding the entire perimeter of the house? Both arms immobilized, the Evil Dream about to fall from the sky, Diana Mercer-Archeos closing the distance with them, and she still did nothing to change the dire fate that awaited her.
Truly, Tristessa was completely useless…
"You know… My intention was to arrive here with my girls out of the blue, and make my triumphal entrance as the prodigal daughter coming home. With a show of fire, blood and carnage! Yes!" the Priestess told Tristessa with excitement, stopping in front of them and placing both hands behind her back as if mocking the girl. "It was a real shock to see so many defenses erected with thaumaturgy, so we had no choice but to surround the house! Boring, right? But it had to be tonight, an imperative, otherwise that would be going against Lord Moebius's prediction."
Of course, Tristessa knew about that initial plan, having experienced it firsthand until its successful execution. All the chaos, all the Death… Her head remembered the strange sensation of being separated from her neck, so fleetingly that there was no pain…
Unlike the present timeline, where Daiana suddenly grabbed her in the same spot and her nails pierced the surface of her skin. She forced her so close to her face that their noses nearly collided, and she squeezed so tightly despite it being only her index finger and thumb that Tristessa couldn't breathe.
"You still haven't told me your name… I told you mine with the purest intentions of establishing a friendly and understanding relationship, but you did nothing but remain silent. Being disrespectful to me. Who do you think you are? Does having a soul so beloved by the God of Chaos make you believe you are superior to others? You are arrogant and rude…"
Her whisper was delicate as porcelain and fierce as a blood-starved beast from the Sea of Trees. Her breath smelled foul, like something rotting, and when Daiana ran her tongue over her open mouth, which was craving oxygen, leaving her disgusting saliva on her lips and teeth, Tristessa wanted it all to end there.
"Kill me…"
She truly begged for Death, for her brain to shut down from the lack of oxygen. It had been enough having been tortured and handed over on a silver platter in a futile attempt to negotiate with a group of psychopaths.
Now she would have to forever remember the taste of Evil, engraved in her punished soul…
But the Priestess released her as casually as she had immobilized her, pushing her simply but with enough force that Tristessa fell to her side, coughing and taking deep breaths.
"Oh well, never mind. We'll have time to chat and get to know each other better, lass," she said, shrugging and turning her full attention to Tiara, who continued screaming with both hands on her head, lost in a sea of madness different from her daughter's. "Now that we're here, how about we get down to business, dear mother?"
With her eyes brimming with tears and oxygen replenishing her head, Tristessa saw that terrible woman grinning from ear to ear with malevolence unworthy of a human being.
"I came for my little brother… No, that's a lie! I actually came for both of them: for little Lucahn, and that baby inside you!"
And her laughter overcame her mother's cries, like a howl directed at the crimson sky.