Fall of Autumn, Week 5, Day 7

As darkness rushed in jagged lumps through blights, a dull ache spread through my body. Mana oozed out of me as I focused on decimating as many of the blights as I could. Arella glanced at me, a grimace on her face, but she continued felling the blights I didn't get.

"Nora, you have to go. You and Klein have a chance to make it to the estate grounds. They can't cross the barrier—"

I felt my hair whip with the force I used to snap my gaze away from Arella.

"Unless we're going together, I'd sooner die than leave you behind."

It was all I had to say to Arella, and I reached my hand out, calling out to the spirits. "Noir, Haze, Shade, I need you to focus on trimming the masses."

Behind me, Noir's massive shield shrank down to the vaguely me-shaped shadow. And I watched Haze and Shade detach themselves from Klein and Arella's shadows. Noir jumped from the top of the carriage and joined the other spirits, before they turned to me as one.

"Our Lady of Darkness' will be done."

And then they shifted, limbs lengthening, mouths gaping, eldritch monstrosities being born from what once were bunnies and pandas and lizards. I felt a feral grin spread across my face, not because of adrenaline pumping through my system, or because I took pride in decimating the blights, but because my spirits were power incarnate.

They were the monsters in the dark that children feared. They were the shadows in a cursed forest. They were death come due.

And they acted like it.

Huge maws crunched on bark limbs, shadows exploded out of crevices, and monsters dropped, all while I directed pikes through the blights in my line of vision.

Arella and Klein fought as well, but I was too preoccupied trying to stay balanced on top of the carriage to look at them for longer than a moment. For longer than it took to see if they were safe.

I watched as bark evaporated into rainbow aether, leaving behind dozens of mana pearls. And as I felled some of the larger monsters, they collapsed into heaps that stayed. Permanent corpses that would fertilize the forest they were killed in. Food for a life they tried to snuff.

Slowly, the lines of blights began to fall apart. Minutes passed and my shadows grew heavy with my fatigue, but as Noir, Haze, and Shade continued to fight, so did I. We were a team, a darkness born of grief and rage and love. While I stood like a sniper, safe from the melee, I brought down all the power I could muster.

Then the end was in sight. Spaces began opening around us, gaps that the blights were not numerous enough to fill any longer. I began to feel lighter, and it was easier to power through my exhaustion. Easier to pretend I was not suffocating this forest with my mana and my aura combined.

That was the moment the forest moved. The massive trees around us leaned outward—as if being pressed down by the sky itself. And as their roots retreated, two trees parted. The sky shone through, as well as a towering blight taller than I stood atop the carriage. As tall as any of the trees of the forest when they had been upright.

[Inspect]

[Whisher Blight, Tier 3, Level 17]

[A twice-evolved blight that took over a Whisher Tree. Specializes in poison attacks and blunt damage.]

[Soul Bound: REDACT—]

[Soul Bound: Evelyn Dawn]

I clenched my jaw, and looked around. I hadn't been inspecting the blights, hadn't thought it really mattered. Most were so small, or breakable, or shambling. They were the desiccated corpses of trees—broken by the power of the six they went up against.

But suddenly, as I fired off my Skill, I saw it everywhere. The answer to a question I already knew.

[Soul Bound: Evelyn Dawn]

[Soul Bound: Evelyn Dawn]

[Soul Bound: Evelyn Dawn]

.

.

.

Every single one. How? How could she have so many under her control?

But I knew. It had to be the same reason I could collect Skills like marbles, or why I was capable of decimating the bramble before us.

Divinity. But—I laughed, a harsh, cold thing—not as much as me, even in my lowered state.

As I looked up at the Whisher Blight, I let go of my shadows. Instead, I trusted my spirits to fight on my behalf. I trusted Arella and Klein to end their bouts and head to me.

I was not afraid.

Not of a monster Eve sent straight to me.

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"You will pray to Nocturne that death takes you quickly," I whispered to the oversized root. "You will be taken to your knees and it will be my doing."

I reached my palm outward and shadow coalesced in my open hand. A dagger, dark and jagged, formed.

"[Edge of Light]"

As a thick miasma coalesced onto the weapon, I pulled my arm back and launched it at the Whisher Blight's face.

But as the blade made contact, the monstrous tree grinned. It was a gnarled thing, with bones of bark and teeth of dried vines. But I could tell that was what it was.

My blade sank into its cheek, slicing into the wood and disintegrating the wood around it. I let it rest there while I summoned another dagger.

"[Edge of Light]"

And as soon as the miasma dripped off its edge, I was flinging it at the creature's stomach. Lodging into its bark, the second dagger did the same thing—destroying the wood surrounding it with its destructive miasma.

I could feel the stretch of my mana. How many more daggers could I launch? How many until the thing fell? Numbers ran in my head, aided by [Quick Calculation], and they all came back bad.

A dagger was too small.

A bola was too small.

It wasn't enough.

I needed something larger, something sharper, something—

I took a sharp breath as, out of the corner of my Perception, I felt rather than saw Arella approaching. Her sword was drawn, and she was taking her stance.

As she stepped into true view, her brown eyes caught my blue and she nodded to the Whisher Blight.

She was attacking.

So, I mouthed back, 'I'll cover you.'

Arella grinned and I watched as her sword began to glow a pale blue before a sheen of water lined it. As Arella got into position, I tightened my fist.

Around me, shadows coiled and rolled, and I knew the best way to cover Arella's sword strike.

"[A Shade of Dawn]"

Before me, my shadows whirled and wrapped around themselves. They stretched and folded and lengthened in all the ways I didn't know how to make them. They sucked in the light of day, growing darker and darker until they were void itself. A sword-shaped abyss before me.

Yet, as I reached for the hilt of [A Shade of Dawn], my fingers stung and my flesh burned. My nails curled and my hair whipped around me. My clothes stuck to my skin and my eyes sharpened. I was pain and anger and guilt and… I was darkness. But for all of that, when I wrapped my hand around the sword, I was nothing at all.

I was free.

The pain subsided from my skin, leaving in its wake purple fingers that bled into pink forearms and orange shoulders. In the reflection of [A Shade of Dawn], my eyes were a bright, shining green, and my hair was golden like Dreya's light.

Around me, the world was silent. Or rather, my ears were near bursting with my heartbeat and I could hear none of the remaining melee, if there was any. Instead, I was pulling back [A Shade of Dawn], doing my best to replicate the stance the Academy Instructor showed to Remour every morning. That she showed to Uriel. And anyone else who chose the sword.

It was clumsy, unpracticed as it was, but it was not meant to be anything but a distraction.

A way to keep the Whisher Blight's attention on me—not that it would be a problem any longer.

For I had become darkness and dawn both. In my palm I wielded the abyss, and on my skin shone the morning light.

I was a dichotomous being—and briefly, I was reminded of a Class I once rejected. Of a path I refused, but that found me anyway with a Goddess's curse.

I took a step forward, and the rope at my waist disintegrated in my light without so much a drop of will from my consciousness.

I angled the sword up, pointed at the towering creature's neck.

And then, like I had done so many times before at the main estate, I jumped.

Unlike before, it was not to hide, to protect myself. It was to protect what I had come to cherish.

Arella. Klein. The life I knew I could live in Fellan. My future.

Up I went, my knees bent and all the Strength I had propelling me forward. Closer and closer, but yet still not quite close enough.

With a thought, a shadow formed under my feet, and I used it as a platform to rise.

And then I was in range.

I swung [A Shade of Dawn] with all the force and torque I could in mid-air, slicing the front of the Whisher Blight's neck.

It grazed the bark, and I was prepared to be blown back with a strike from the creature. Instead, the wound split open with the light of a sunrise. Pinks and oranges and purple hues bled from the strike, and dark tendrils formed from the shadows that light created and forced their way into the wound.

They dug and dug, until I found myself drifting lightly to the ground while the Whisher Blight fell with a crash.

In my palm, I felt a thrum go through [A Shade of Dawn], and I knew it was thrilled. That it had taken from me, and given back threefold what I had offered it.

I had given it a task.

It gave me a life.

Together we felled an enemy.

And then [A Shade of Dawn] was gone, and my skin reformed around me back in its regular pale tone. The lightness bled from my hair into my dark curls. And though I could not see it, I knew my eyes were back to blue.

As the Whisher Blight lay before me, I saw its mana pearl—a massive thing of swirling purple light. It was odd, I'd never heard of such a color for a blight to have.

I stepped forward, towards it.

The closer I got, the more certain I became.

The mana pearl was more. It had an aura.

An aura I recognized.

As prim and proper. As dignified and noble. As cold and cruel.

With a stomp of my foot, I crushed the mana pearl.

Whatever bound Eve to this blight would be no more.

As the shards crunched below my boot, I frowned.

And, as if I knew all along what it would do, I said:

"You are no more, sister. Rest. And do not come for me again."

As my words fell away to the wind, I felt the System trying to send me a notice. I pushed it all away.

I could deal with it later.

There was clean up to do—blights still to vanquish. Though their numbers were small.

As I turned to help Arella and Klein, my knees gave way and I tumbled down. I was going to hit the dirt and I braced myself for the impact that never came.

Because around me were warm arms and a kind voice, saying, "It's all right, my Lady. We will take it from here."

I looked up at the gentle green eyes of Sir Limrick. All I could find it in me to say was a half-choked up, "You're late, George."

His eyes crinkled at my tired smile.

"Nora, what have I said about titles?"

I closed my eyes, drained of every last drop of stamina in my body.

Behind my eyes, I watched as the System tried to send me a [Combat Report].

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