Tristessa called the wandering spirit of one of the soldiers into the realm of the living. Broken, like his body; choosing him at random, her hand outstretched in direction of an arbitrary spot of one of the many cadaverous mounds. Her own dark soul was subjected to unbearable compression, a strain the girl felt throughout her body and beyond, throbbing in the vein at her temple with excruciating pain and bursting capillaries behind her eyes.

  “Ghh…! Nnngh…!”

  As she struggled against the toll her Divinity exacted, in a burst of bloody particles, the human remains on the oversaturated-with-blood ground began to stir: the secondary mechanism of her Divinity, [Demiurgic Regression], initiated the reassembly of the body of none other than Rykard.

  Pieces of armor, bone, and muscle took shape amidst the chaotic yet available material. It seemed the supernatural mechanism prioritized effectiveness above all else and thus chose almost randomly from the organic mass at its disposal. Creating a monstrous revenant, with one arm longer than the other, hands with more than five fingers, a torso with its abdomen exposed and organs busted and hanging out.

  Almost no skin covering the shredded muscle tissue and severed tendons. And Rykard's head split in two to house the mangled fragments of Lorraine's face inside, amidst broken shards of skull and liquified remains of brain.

  An unholy abomination that left Auron speechless, paralyzed by fear, unlike Zephyr. He who suffered from another of the many aspects that composed the devastating feeling of dread.

  “Gods, protect me...” The General backed away the instant he saw movement behind Daiana, but the horror of seeing such an abomination stand was so great that the duel to the Death with the witch had lost its purpose. “R-Rykard?”

  “Help him!” Tristessa ordered her revenant. The creature couldn't scream, its mouth merely a receptacle for the deformed, demented grin with which Lorraine had died. But it did let the girl know the absolute hatred it felt for her for granting it such a mess up existence. “Ahh, shit! Agh…uff…!”

  For a moment, Daiana mistook the origin of Zephyr’s terror as herself. In result, a naive, haughty grin formed on her demented face. It didn't take long for her to realize something was wrong, and when she heard splashes over the pool of blood behind her, it was too late: Rykard's monstrous corpse trapped the witch in a suffocating embrace.

  “What…?! AH!?” Immobilizing her arms, the revenant lifted her from the crimson ground and left her at the mercy of the two men and his summoner. “WHAT?! WHAT, WHAT, WHAT?! THE FUCK IS THIS?! GET YOUR HANDS OFF ME, YOU BASTARDS!”

  “K-Kill her, Zephyr! Please, I-I can’t…! AHH, DAMN IT!” The pressure exerted by her Divinity tore something inside her, and fresh blood rising from her esophagus found its way out the sides of her mouth. She almost fell to her knees if Auron hadn’t caught her in his arms. “Kill her! DO IT!”

  But before the General could even decide in the face of such an unforeseen circumstance, something else equally unforeseen happened. A new variable appeared in the form of a brief but powerful and blinding violet flash very close to Daiana.

  “What the fuck…?!”

  Tristessa squinted hard, feeling that violet light burning her retinas. But worse was the sensation of extreme heat that made her think, for a moment, that she was about to be killed by incineration, again. She wasn't far off the mark because something had indeed been reduced to ashes, given the strong, sickening smell of burnt remains. And because of the sudden interruption of her connection to Rykard's corpse, she knew the revenant had been the victim.

  When she opened her eyes, the first thing she saw was Auron and Zephyr with their guards up; one pointing his revolvers and the other his spear at not one, but two witches of the Coven.

  “No… Another one?!” Tristessa lamented, her relieved yet aching soul collapsing at the sight of the newly arrived woman. “Who is she?!”

  Dressed in black, blond long hair escaping from inside her hood, and wielding a wand made of bones. That unknown witch had changed the type of prison for Daiana, who was now immobilized by gravity glyphs. Behind them lay the revenant's body, collapsing into ashes, a victim of elemental thaumaturgy of radiance-type.

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  “Salomé! What in the name of Lord Moebius are you doing?! LET ME GO!” Daiana demanded, fighting against the unnatural gravity, writhing in vain and shrieking.

  “...”

  The new witch didn't respond or make a sound, the reason becoming clear when she turned her head slightly toward those present: her face was completely distorted, her eyes and mouth sealed with iron wires, while only part of the bone and two large slits remained of her nose.

  “Tatyana Salomé.” Zephyr named her in a way that made Tristessa's soul tremble: profound uncertainty and an absolute need to defend himself and those behind him. Understanding that to attack was suicide. “She is also a Priestess of the Black Eye.”

  “This is very bad. Damn it, how are we going to get out of this?” Auron wondered, on the same page as the General, debating with himself whether simply moving would be an invitation for that new witch to kill them. His feet didn't seem to have been invited to that inner debate, as, guided by the instinct for survival, they made the gunslinger take two steps back. “...!”

  But the witch did nothing. She only grabbed Daiana by the neck with her free hand, bony and with very long nails.

  “Wait... Isn't she...going to attack us?”

  Ignoring Daiana's shrieks and her struggle against the fingers squeezing her windpipe, Tatyana simply stared at the three of them, her forced silence a warning.

  “Looks like this is the end of our battle... She must know that reinforcements from the camp are about to arrive here,” Zephyr whispered, frustrated and annoyed by this parley they were all forced to accept, or risk killing each other and leaving no one alive in that place.

  “TRISTESSA IRANDELL!”

  Daiana's bellow distracted the girl, pulling her repulsed gaze from the nightmarish face of the newly arrived witch. Not even Tatyana's insistence on grabbing her by the neck was enough to stop her partner from tearing her vocal cords with screams.

  “I'M GOING TO KILL YOU! YOU AND EVERYONE YOU LOVE!” Daiana already knew her partner wasn't going to let her wreak havoc around for another minute. Nearby, they could hear the sounds of carts moving forward, the roar of vilecrosses, and the ground began to vibrate beneath their feet. Their only option was to escape. “I swear, you won't be able to keep my family safe! The worst of hells awaits you all...! Oh, and you know what?! Salomé, search between my tits! Show them what I have!”

  The witch deprived of almost all of her senses wasn't amused to receive lascivious orders from her partner. She squeezed Daiana's neck so hard that her face turned pale-blue, lacking of blood flow and oxygen.

  Eventually, Tatyana eventually let go of her immobilized-by-gravity-magic partner and searched among the bandages covering her breasts, pulling out what appeared to be a piece of paper folded in three.

  “AHHH, YES, YES, YES, IT SMELLS LIKE YOU, IRANDELL! ALL THAT DISCORD IS YOURS! I KNEW IT, I KNEW IT, YES!” the witch celebrated, laughing victoriously as Tatyana displayed the object, which was actually made of plastic and was trying to revert to its original state. “SHOW THEM!”

  Now Tatyana also seemed interested in Tristessa, her face mutilated with cruelty aligned with her own. She was the only one among all those present whose attention wasn't focused on the object she held between her index finger and thumb:

  A [photograph] emanating a large amount of miasma of darkness, which the soul of the gaping black-haired girl had imbued it with. Made of that polymeric material that didn't correspond to the current technological level of the Empire. Although dirty and battered, the color was still visible; the five people in the photograph had their faces scratched, and behind them was an alien cityscape, with buildings and vehicles impossible to find on Nekrom.

  “That’s mine!” Tristessa cried, driven by the need to reclaim that object from her world, a potential catalyst for memories locked away within her mind. “Give it to me!”

  If Auron hadn’t grabbed her arm, she would have gone straight to the witches to retrieve what was rightfully hers. Unaware of her actions, oblivious to the fact that Zephyr was there with them, confused by the sight of the object. From a distance, there was no way to discern what the photograph depicted, but this man was nonetheless a witness to something he shouldn’t have seen, something that would raise uncomfortable questions.

  “Try to stay alive! I’ll get my hands on you and feast on your body and your brain, I swear! You hear me?! I WILL LEARN EVERYTHING ABOUT YOU AND THE GODS WILL CRY FOREVER UPON YOUR FUCKING INSANE SOUL ONCE I’M DONE WITH IT!”

  A threat followed by insane laughter that Tristessa would never forget as long as Daiana Mercer-Archeos lived. Having interfered with her lord's designs and ruined his plans, the Priestess would not rest until she saw the cause of such an unprecedented failure die in the cruelest, bloodiest, and most violent way possible. Tristessa saw that damaging sincerity in her gaze, radiating the purest hatred imaginable, worthy of the nightmares that would soon haunt her and accompany her sleepless nights.

  The promise of a witch. An accursed manifest, bonding them together with a fate obscured by Death.

  With that image forever etched in her mind, both Daiana Mercer-Archeos and Tatyana Salomé were swallowed by the violet light, disappearing without a trace once the effect had subsided.