"DAIANAA!!!"
Hearing the Coven's main goal made Tiara lose what little sanity she had left. The chaotic mix of distress and anger her daughter's appearance caused her reached the breaking point of no return, forcing the pregnant woman to lift the single-shot pistol from the ground and point it at Daiana's eerily smiling face.
"DIE!!!"
The shot echoed all the way to the tops of the hills, several Imperial vistas further north. The empty cartridge fell to the grass, and a small cloud of smoke, along with the smell of burnt gunpowder, lingered in the air.
And the Priestess continued smiling despite being hit in...
"No... It can't be!" Tristessa thought, still hearing the ringing of the shot in her ears.
Her eyes had been deceived for a few seconds, given their inability to see Daiana's rapid movement: with her right arm she had made an ascending movement, tracing an arc with such inhuman precision and speed that she had managed to deflect the trajectory of the bullet.
But it hadn't been her arm what rendered useless the shot per se, but something else... Something more inhumane than her reaction speed: a curved black blade as dark as onyx yet ghostly—like shadows that had acquired a state of existence between astral and material—floating parallel to her hand and connected to it and the rest of her arm by tongues of pure darkness.
"I want to believe you haven't forgotten my Divinity of the Hand of Umbral Edge, eh, mother?" the Priestess asked, proudly displaying her spectral weapon. "Ever since I discovered my Divinity of Power, you've stopped respecting the Dark Sun, Kantrus. You should stop antagonizing the Gods, otherwise misfortune will knock on your door more often."
In her fit of rage, Tiara threw the pistol at her and didn't even come close to her target, earning mockery from Daiana and her minions.
"Any other bright ideas, mother?" the evil woman asked, dematerializing her weapon and raising her hand. "Alright, girls! It's time to go knock on the door…"
"You're not welcome in that house, witches… Sycoma!"
A man's voice behind her was a ray of hope in Tristessa's weary heart. The few imprudent witches who dared to step forward were violently pushed back by invisible pulses, the product of the thaumaturgy of the blood elf Severus, who passed by Tiara and stood in front of her to protect her, threatening Daiana with his cane.
The Priestess clapped excitedly at the sight of her injured minions rolling on the ground with multiple exposed fractures in their frontal bones and bleeding out rapidly.
"Wonderful, wonderful! I love thaumaturgy, it's a shame I'm not very good with numbers and logic and equations and…and…HAHAHA, I'M SO FUCKING STUPID!"
Daiana laughed like the madwoman she was, so excited that she even jumped in the air several times. As she turned to face the newcomer, her eyes lit up.
"Dear oh dear, a blood elf! And so very, very handsome... Ladies, we have a delicious male to play with for many days to come!"
"The only game I will play with you will be to evaporate every drop of blood from within your rotten veins," Severus warned her. The glintstone at the tip of his cane changed from violet to phosphorescent blue, warning in advance of the elemental magic of electricity and instant death for any of the excited witches who dared to step forward.
"Severus..."
On the ground, suffering from her leg that wouldn't stop bleeding, Tristessa was completely ignored by the elf. He didn't even pay her a second's attention; Tiara was the only one there worthy of being protected, while she was Discord-user scum.
"What the hell are you doing here? What about Jin and Lucahn? Did you leave them alone?! Why?! Why did you do that?!" Tiara bombarded Severus with so many questions due to the unyielding emotional instability she suffered from. Tristessa watched her dig her fingers into the mud and pull out weeds without stopping, while she moved back and forth as if her belly was an unbearable burden. "I told you to stay with them!"
"I'm sorry, but I can't live up to your expectations, my friend. You and your baby, here alone facing that abomination… I couldn't allow it," the elf justified himself, without taking his gaze off Daiana for a single second. "Jin will give his life for Lucci. You know that, more than anyone."
Without even being mentioned, without her existence being acknowledged, Tristessa felt that infinite sense of loneliness that, coupled with Severus's ominous prophecy about father and son, made the blood inside her heart compress it with sharp pain.
"Wouldn't it bother you if I killed your daughter?"
Severus's question didn't stir even a shred of compassion in the chestnut-haired woman. Only hatred remained in her being, nothing more.
"No... Finish her off! Don't even let her bones remain!" she shrieked, throwing all the mud she had accumulated in her palms into the air.
"Oh, what a cruel mother, hating her only daughter so much!" Daiana couldn't help but let out a mischievous, perverse giggle. "Go on, girls, rejoice in the massacre!"
Letting out wild screams and vicious laughter, the Coven witches attacked. Many rushed toward the house and were intercepted by the Aegis defense glyphs Severus had placed: the ethereal symbols became visible upon contact and transmuted into great spectral barriers that blocked the way and resisted all kinds of blows from the witches, from punches to blows from worn-out knives and hammers.
Other witches, skilled in fire elemental thaumaturgy, made glyphs appear using catalyzed blackstone wands with small, unrefined glintstones at their ends. These glyphs, which glowed like the mouth of an erupting volcano, collapsed into dozens of fireballs that impacted against the supernatural defenses, generating powerful explosions against their surface.
And it was a small group of women who surrounded Tiara, Tristessa, and Severus, supervised under the watchful and enthusiastic gaze of Daiana.
"Severus, they know how to use the magic of your people!" Tristessa shouted from the ground, seeing the women arm themselves with wands and ready to attack.
"Anx Plasmos!"
That was the moment when the elf quickly fixed his gaze on her and reacted by shouting:
"Fahreus Plasmos!"
Looking closer, Tristessa realized that this time Severus was forced to give up his own blood—in addition to what she was losing from the wound Tiara had inflicted on her— in order to create the glyphs, escaping through the pores of the skin on his arms.
Those blood glyphs became the spheres the girl had already seen in action in the previous timeline, which flew to intercept the witches' spears and, this time, were completely successful in their defense.
"Stop it, lass! Don't ruin the surprise!" Daiana yelled at Tristessa in annoyance, kicking the floor like a child throwing a tantrum. At that moment, one of her minions staggered back, half-dead from having lost a portion of her head to the bloody sphere that pierced her like a bullet, and the Priestess pushed her away with a sharp kick to the ribs. "Get out of the way!"
"You are well-informed about the enemy's techniques…" Severus told Tristessa, his lack of confidence still evident in his dark voice and furrowed brow. "What else do you know about…?"
"Earth magic!"
Tristessa shouted at him just as the witches pointed their wands at the ground and covered the area with rings of earth elemental glyphs. Stalagmites the size of a grown man erupted from the epicenter of the rings to tear Severus to pieces from various directions, but thanks to Tristessa's warning, he managed to dodge them and emerge unscathed.
"Meddler, you will be punished!"
One of the witches, enraged by the wounded black-haired girl's every intervention, switched targets and made a similar ring of glyphs appear beneath her, and Tristessa only gasped at the light brown glow beneath her body.
"Girl…!"
She heard Severus yell, falling backward as he partially dodged a stalagmite that grazed his right leg. The rock ripped away the fabric of his trouser and tore off a chunk of skin and muscle fibers, leaving an entire rocky side stained with blood.
On the ground, gritting his teeth to resist the pain, the elf pointed his staff at her, causing the glintstone to glow white, but unfortunately, it lost power due to a sudden crack in its surface from overuse.
"No!" he exclaimed, and his dismayed gaze shifted to Tristessa. "Get out of there!"
The ground rumbled beneath her. Despite having accepted her fate days ago, Tristessa realized she wasn't ready to die again. One never is, when Life is a second from ending…
"Vendra Eras!"