The Only One That Can Do It...

  "To the girl who wished to live but had it taken from her..."

  "I grant you this salvation..."

  "Receive Divinity..."

  "My beloved Trinity..."

  Trinity will never forget those words; they're why she's still alive.

  The scythe-wielding woman flicks the blood off her blade before turning to leave, but stops when she senses something amiss; that woman's not DEAD. Eos scrutinizes the corpse, her lips creasing into an agitated scowl. At that moment, Eos senses a potent energy releasing from Trinity's right eye; the one that's always closed. It happens in a blinding instant, the flashing radiance so intense that the Angel of Death shields her face in discomfort; what is this forbidden power?

  And as a Phoenix rises from the Ashes...

  Trinity revives amidst shining golden flames.

  And Eos flashes a maliciously disgusted look. Immortality is an unforgivable transgression against Death.

  Ra blessing a mortal with the Phoenix of Resurrection is a grave sin against Thanatos.

  The roaring flames or revival surrounding Trinity disperse a few seconds after she regains consciousness, then manifests into a blazing Immortal Bird several times her size. Eos watches with silent contempt, idly bracing her scythe behind her with one hand as the two square off again in the shadowed courtyard of a crumbling church. All this time, the Abyssal Rift remains unfettered within the depths of the church.

  These women are focusing on the wrong thing...

  "...Ugh..." Trinity softly mutters, caressing the area of her neck where the killing blow was dealt; her wound is gone, like it never happened to begin with. Her mismatched gold and blue-eyed gaze then fixates on the scythe-wielding femme fatale standing with an eerily nonchalant vibe about her, like she's waiting for Trinity to get herself together before attacking. Trinity scoffs, immediately ignoring any doubts in her head and assuming a fighting stance. Then, she claps her hands together and makes an animal motif, resembling a feline, before chanting, her Phoenix dispersing as she speaks.

  "Shadow Tiger."

  A vicious snarl echoes through the air moments before a large and intimidating Sabertoothed Tiger bathed in black shadows pounces into life at Trinity's side. The creature's burning blue eyes contrast sharply with the moving shadows making up its visage. Its muscular form goes low in preparation to attack the scythe-wielding woman standing her ground across the way. As Eos glances at the Shadow Tiger, she instantly feels the strength inside of it; Trinity is more interesting than Eos anticipated. This growing curiosity works in Trinity's favor. She takes a breath and readies herself while asking one more time, trying to reason with this stranger.

  "Look, lady..." Trinity starts to say, glancing at the church, when a pulse of Abyssal Energy lashes out like a whip into the courtyard. Trinity quickly turns her gaze on Eos again; her right eye is closed once more. "We can kill each other after we deal with this Abyssal Rift because surely you know that the longer we ignore it, the worse it's going to get!?" she reasons with an annoyed tone in her words that's not liable to help talk down Eos, but Trinity doesn't care. She's already dealt with enough bullshit at this point and wants to go home: with or without that silver-haired Remnant.

  Eos isn't reasonable, though...

  "The Abyssal Rift is of no concern to me," Eos calmly states with an apathetic tone, pointing the broadside of her scythe blade at Trinity and her tiger. "I can deal with it whenever I wish, which will happen after I kill you," she reiterates, tensing the grip on her scythe, and Trinity's familiar snarls back in retaliation, ready to move the instant Eos does. Trinity, however, maintains a defensive stance across the field, glancing at another blasting rush of Abyssal Energy blowing past an unconcerned Eos; this woman can't be real or serious. Where is Aerin!?

  "And, why exactly are you trying to kill me!?" Trinity questions with an expression twisted in disbelief. "I haven't done anything to you, and I don't even fucking know you?" she groans, growing more agitated the longer she thinks about it. Her frustrations fall on deaf ears and an empty, glassy gaze when Eos replies in a way that makes Trinity's heart chill.

  "Because Thanatos claimed your life a long time ago, and Ra denied it," Eos coldly says.

  Trinity freezes...

  How did this woman know that!?

  ... Who is she!?

  "... Where's Aerin?" Trinity swallows her growing anxiety and hides it behind a question, along with her uneasiness with a controlled expression; what's going on!? "I know you know who I'm talking about because he was here before I ran into you. Silver hair, intense eyes, strange-looking sword on his back," she gives his description, and Eos tilts her head in response. It's in that moment that Trinity thinks Eos is piecing everything together. Then, to her surprise? Eos gives her an honest answer.

  "He is not your concern, but he is alive and safe," Eos calmly responds before rushing Trinity with speed exceeding her first attack, but her opponent is ready this time. Eos's scythe swing carves nothing but air with a vicious whistling after effect before Trinity's Shadow Tiger lunges in retaliation with swiping claws bathed in darkness but hard and sharp as steel. The beast misses its attack, though, as Eos is gone like a ghost a second after missing her swing, evading the counterattack, and appearing behind the feline. She raises her scythe with both hands and swings to cleave the familiar in half at the center in one blow, but Trinity intercepts her.

  "No, you don't!" Trinity growls while rushing out of a shadowy veil above Eos, an Energy Arrow pulled back using her hands and arms as the drawstring. She releases the arrow, the projectile breaking the sound barrier on a direct course for Eos's head until the latter turns and backhands the energy arrow like it's nothing, a look of casual indifference across her features. The red-eyed woman turns to attack Trinity while she's falling through the air, but the Shadow Tiger takes her attention as it lunges for her again. It barrages with a relentless assault of wicked swipes and lunges, its claws and precision adequate that it's forcing Eos to parry with the blade of her scythe. This thing hits much harder than it should.

  Eos, though, so adequate and lethal with a weapon unorthodox for most, still keeps pace with the larger animal in their melee. Her scythe swings are accurate to the point she keeps the beast within the sweet zone of her blade, where she can deal the most damage with the oddly affixed cutting edges. She swings back against every attack with enough force that the recoil offsets both adversaries at every exchange, keeping either from gaining an offensive advantage. Her form is flawless and fluid as well, her full-body scythe swings and flourishes an elegant ballerina dance of lethality against the raw and primal assault of the carnivorous Shadow Beast.

  Trinity lands on her feet and briefly looks toward the Abyssal Rift behind her, but ignores it and runs away from the fight. Eos doesn't realize what's going on until the Shadow Beast attacking her disappears, and she catches the fleeting visage of the woman dashing behind a nearby building. She stares for a few seconds in silence, her expression oddly curious when she tilts her head, letting those locks of black bangs sweep over her eerie glowing red eyes; did that Remnant think they could run from a Goddess of Death?

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  Eos moves to pursue, but another wave of Abyssal Energy bursting from the rift inside the crumbling church draws her eye. The red-eyed, pale woman seemingly forgets about Trinity when she turns to stare down the beautifully eerie colored tear in reality pulsing in the distance. She tightens her grip on the scythe held in her left hand, a subtly shimmering sheen of dark-colored Anima fuming like fog off her double-edged blade. She looks like she's anticipating something...

  And that's when she sees a grotesque arm bathed in Abyssal Corruption breach the confines of the rift.

  Eos is ready.

  Trinity grinds to a stop inside an abandoned building a block away from the church to catch her breath; she's used more Anima than she wanted to. The young woman stands in the dim darkness for several seconds as she takes time to gather her senses; there's a lot of shit going on. "... Fuck! I should abandon this mission and just go home," she groans, pinching her nose in frustration. She doesn't seem to look like she'll do that, though. She betrays her words a few seconds later.

  "No, no..." she sighs, regretting a conversation she had before coming here. "I've dealt with worse shit; a promise is a promise. Fuck you, Cyril..." Trinity curses, closing the one eye she can use without backlash and clasping her hands together again, making a bird motif with her hands.

  "Midnight Owl."

  The Owl bathed in burning shadows flickers into life with a whooshing noise in front of Trinity, and she bends to stroke the creature's head feathers. "I need you to find Aerin for me. Can you do that?" she asks, and the familiar ruffles its feathers in approval before beginning. The avian bird of prey starts rotating its head at seemingly random intervals, twitching its ears, and then flying through a broken window outside high into the sky, where Trinity follows. When she vanishes in darkness and reappears atop the building, a loud crashing sound from the church catches her attention, followed by another intense atmospheric pressure increase that nearly forces her to her knees.

  Was the Abyssal Guardian not dealt with!?

  "You're fucking kidding me!?" Trinity almost pulls her hair out; everything is going to shit, and she wasn't equipped to handle this by herself. This was supposed to be an average expedition, not a clusterfuck of chaos. "Fuck it, I'm getting Aerin and we're getting out of here," she decides to abandon the mission entirely. Her familiar flies down to her shortly afterward and aggressively chirps at her before taking off toward a nearby building; it's found Aerin.

  Trinity wastes no time and pursues the familiar, keeping pace with its speed on foot as she effortlessly parkours over rooftops that no regular human has the athleticism to do. As she jumps down onto the street, she lands in a perfect roll back on her feet and dips into an abandoned shop, her owl darts inside. The young woman's blue eye widens with relief and annoyance when she sees Aerin leaning against a wall in the corner, unconscious but alive. Trinity quickly snaps her fingers before kneeling by the man to check on him, an orb of soft light sparking above and behind her, illuminating the dirty building's interior.

  "Yo! Wake up!" Trinity reaches out and nudges the man's shoulder, then notices the head wound staining his silver hair red. The woman recoils, feeling an uncomfortable tingle of pain upon seeing it. "Shit... which one of them did this to you?" she references the scythe-wielding woman and the Abyssal Guardian, noting Aerin's extensive physical wounds and scratches. "Don't worry; I'm nicer and more resourceful than I should be..." she assures with a little exasperated sarcasm, reaching to brush away the hair from her right eye, revealing the vertical scar over it and opening it again. That golden-hued gaze brightens with a radiantly divine energy that forces itself into Aerin's flesh and spirit through sight alone.

  And right before Trinity's mismatched eyes, Aerin's wounds burn away in the Flames of Revival...

  And he awakens...

  ".... Ngh..." Aerin grunts, slowly coming to while rubbing his hurting head. Trinity immediately closes her eye and slumps on her rear, and her familiar disappears. She's about to fall over until Aerin notices and scrambles to catch her before her head smashes into the ground. "Hey! You okay!? What happened!?" he frantically questions, not remembering anything after the Guardian grabbed and tossed him aside like trash during their exchange. As he holds and questions Trinity, the entire building they're in shakes and quivers from the shockwaves of savage combat happening at the church, and Aerin feels a weird sensation.

  He feels drawn toward the church...

  Trinity regains her bearings before he thinks too much on it.

  "I'm..." the black-haired Remnant starts to say with a weak voice at first that slowly returns to normal; she recovers quite fast. "I'm fine. I just..." She pauses, realizing Aerin's hovering over her and holding her from hitting the floor; her eyes widen in surprise, but she keeps her bearings and calmly rises to her feet with his help. They're both up and awake now. "I'm fine, but I can't use my right eye again. So, we need to get the fuck out of here because if we get seriously wounded again, we likely aren't leaving here alive..." she warns, sucking her teeth now recalling Cyril's words in the back of her mind.

  "This is a job only you can do, Trinity. Your talents are necessary for this one..."

  Trinity despises how she suffers from her success and efficiency sometimes.

  Aerin, however, doesn't want to leave.

  "I can't leave, Trinity..." Aerin says, drawing an explicitly bewildered look from the woman; he explains himself before she crashes out on him for being idiotic. "If I want Cyril to keep his promise, I need to destroy that Abyssal Rift," he says, and Trinity's visible ire slowly fades into annoyed silence, Cyril and his damn promises. The two Remnants stagger and stumble when the ground shakes again from another chaotic shockwave coming from the church; what's going on!?

  "And how do you plan to destroy the Abyssal Rift?" Trinity questions with a slight chuckle of disbelief. "There's a scythe-wielding lunatic over there, and she's likely what's causing these aftershocks. I'm going to assume that she's the one who dealt with the Abyssal Guardian, too?" she questions, already knowing the answer even before Aerin looks away in slight embarrassment; he didn't know. That's not the only problem they have to solve, either.

  "Plus, we can't perform a Lament Rite anymore, either..." Trinity shakes her head with a heavy sigh, resting a hand over her chest. "The Abyssal Rift has been open for too long, it's too concentrated. We'll have to get more Remnants out here to help us. I for sure don't have the Anima Energy left after the shit I just did..." she groans, pinching the bridge of her nose until Aerin's next comment shocks her back to attention.

  "I can purify the rift by myself. We don't need a Lament Rite..." Aerin calmly says as he steps past Trinity and heads toward the church. Trinity watches him pass her while wearing a clear look of confusion on her face; did she hear that right? He's bluffing. She quickly tails him, though. In that moment, it seems like she's forgotten all about the danger they're in; she needs to affirm she heard him right.

  "You can do what now!?" she calls out, chasing the man down the road; he's faster than she thought. Trinity pursues him through the streets with newfound vigor in her step. "A Remnant can't cleanse an Abyssal Rift without a Lament Rite," she reminds, but Aerin quickly dismisses her concern without looking back.

  "I just need to get my sword back. You'll see..." Aerin responds, disappearing in a burst of speed like a vanishing ghost, much to Trinity's sudden awe and shock. She slides to a stop a block away from the church when Aerin vanishes, then staggers again from another aftershock coming from the church. He's not traversing shadows to disappear like she does, nor is he simply moving so fast he's hard to track; he's outright vanishing like a ghost. She's never seen a technique like that.

  "... Cyril, you better fucking tell me everything that's going on when I get back..." the young woman exhales, putting her hands together and making a feline. If Aerin can cleanse the rift by himself like he claims, she's likely going to have to deal with the scythe woman. This is such a pain for her.

  "Shadow Tiger," she chants, summoning her bestial familiar bathed in darkness to her side again. She's not done arming herself for the fight to come, though. She steps into a nearby shadow with her familiar and vanishes in the next few moments. Like a predator on the hunt, she'll wait for the opportune moment to take that woman out this time.

  Aerin had better keep his word, too.

  Back at the crumbling church...

  "GRAAAAAAAAAAGH!" the revived and empowered Abyssal Guardian roars when attacking the scythe-wielding woman; the Abyssal Rift revived it after some time. It swings a crystalline appendage shaped like the blades of a mantis' forelimbs at the woman, slicing through concrete like paper when it misses. A whipping slash of air carves through the atmosphere toward some buildings in the distance, slicing them through on impact; such power in the brutish-looking monstrosity.

  The red-eyed Remnant effortlessly evades the attack with an ominously silent sidestep, putting her some meters away from the monster's flank. She's already on offense when her boots touch the ground again, lunging with her scythe cocked back and then slicing at the Abyssal Guardian's armored side. Her scythe impales and hooks into crystal hard as steel, and her inhuman strength that should far exceed what her physical body should be capable of, drives that swing through and rips out chunks of the creature's flank, a critical blow.

  The Abyss Guardian wails in agony, but only for a moment; the wound is already healing and recrystallizing. The Guardian is at full health within seconds, and attacks again, driving Eos on the back foot once more. The Remnant sucks her teeth but keeps a calm and confident look across her face; this monster's not going to beat her. She rushes it head-on when it rushes her; the two are on a crash course for direct contact until Aerin appears between them, catching both by surprise when he spins midair and slams his boot into the unsuspecting Guardian's head. He hits the beast with so much force that he floors the ten-foot-tall Guardian, the ground fracturing beneath it on impact.

  With the monster briefly stunned, Aerin's eyes Eos at the same time she saw him. The two seem locked in a staring contest that feels like it lasts forever. It's an encounter neither of them knows how to approach; a meeting long overdue that Cyril promised Aerin would have. Yet the more answers and revelations that come to light, the more questions rise in Aerin's head. How did Cyril know about this stuff? Who is this woman? There's no time to think. Another pulse of Abyssal Energy snatches Aerin's attention, and the Abyssal Guardian is recovering. He needs to move.

  Aerin dashes toward the rift inside the church without concerning himself with the scythe-wielding woman; he doesn't feel like she'll attack him, and his intuition is right. However, as Eos lets Aerin go and moves to deal with the rising Abyssal Guardian, she suddenly loses all of her strength and drops her scythe, then collapses face-first into the dirt. She's unconscious, and the Guardian takes this opportunity to attack, lunging at her with a bladed arm raised for the killing blow.

  Things never go as planned...

  To be continued! Next Chapter: Wraiths & Shadows...