Tristessa was so overwhelmed, so shocked by what had happened, that she couldn't remember when she had sat in the same spot where Madame Luchie had been admiring the Twin Moons. The pungent scent of tobacco had long since been carried away by the wind, leaving in its place the fresh fragrances of the pale widows. Sources of natural beauty that Tristessa could no longer appreciate, Vergil's departure acting like an eclipse in her soul, turning all that nocturnal light into darkness before her eyes.
“I'm sorry, Vergil,” Tristessa apologized in her mind, for the umpteenth time, without finding the peace that was never going to come. “I'm sorry...”
Tempted to seek refuge within her mental palace, a single tear slipped down her cheek, laden with those brief but special memories of riding the black-furred aracross or receiving his displays of affection that left her face damp and smelling of raw meat.
She clung to the hope that she would find him again, but the end of that road was as far away as her return to Earth. A road she hadn't even begun to travel, with another equally perilous one ahead, and a vassal of the Shadow Queen waiting at its end.
How long would it take? How many times would she die trying and use [Dark Resurrection] to return?
The outlook was bleak, but that's how it was meant to be. Blind optimism would only lead to Merzul or Crywolf becoming one of her many supra-temporal tombs right from the start.
Of hers and her allies.
One of them—the one for whom she harbored warm feelings—had just stepped into the courtyard and spotted her, guided by her Discord like a lighthouse in a storm.
“Tristessa, there you are!” The elegant, crimson-haired elf trotted toward her, jubilation plastered on his face; a joy that seemed unwilling to fade since their victory against Aurelia. Only a hint of confusion lingered on his brow. “Listen, I think my eyes played a trick on me, but I could swear I saw Karla Luchie leaving the castle with an aracross that looked a lot like Vergil.”
“S-Sev… That was Vergil,” she told him, using what little strength she had left to turn her head and meet Severus’s shocked gaze, revealing her misery.
“What?! But why? What happened?”
The elf sat beside her, and Tristessa told him everything that had happened. She held nothing back and didn’t stop for a moment, even though the words that flowed from her lips channeled fresh tears, which she wiped away with a handkerchief he offered her.
“That wet-varg smelling old woman! Who does she think she is by taking your aracross? Maybe if we catch up to her we can…” Furious, Severus tried to get up from his seat, but Tristessa stopped him by grabbing his arm. “What are you doing? You can’t just let her go like that! Let’s ask her to sit down and negotiate!”
“What else can we offer Madame Luchie? The riches she lost, more people close to me to be her hostages?” the girl asked, shaking her head, dejected and resigned. “All that woman wants is for a Stranger to kill the Dead End King and free Crywolf from the Shadow Realm’s siege.”
“But it could take years, even decades…!”
“Believe me: I want to go right now and get Vergil back. But all I'll do is make us all kill each other… Remember, Karla’s resigned to her dream: you, more than anyone, should understand her.” Tristessa released the elf, and he lowered his gaze, as if that argument, spoken with such sadness by the girl, had been a low blow to his chest.
“I'm sorry, Tristessa,” he apologized once he regained his composure and let out a resigned sigh. “I'd like to say something funny to cheer you up, but I haven't had much imagination lately.”
“You? Funny? Thinking about something so far-fetched actually makes me laugh,” she retorted, smiling slightly at the memories that resurfaced from past loops.
“Lady Eramisaptor told me I was the jester of the Magnus Gravitas Academy, didn't she? She wasn't lying; I like making people laugh.”
“Hard to believe.”
The blood elf, hands on his hips, glanced at the field of flowers and the labyrinth. He bit his lower lip as if searching hard for the right words to say. An inner conflict.
“We will get Vergil back,” he blurted out, nodding to himself, his mind focused on something beyond the natural beauty of the courtyard. “You’ll see: we will slay the Dead End King. Him and all the other Great Evils…until only the Shadow Queen remains to destroy and avenge my kind.”
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And he wasn’t lying to make her feel better: he was truly convinced they could achieve the impossible. There was no other way to survive in this world; it was push forward, or fade into imperishable oblivion.
“I see you have a lot of faith in me. That makes me happy, but it also makes me a little nervous,” she admitted, not showing that she was slightly disappointed since she was sure that wasn't what Severus seemed to have been thinking, even though it was the truth. She thought that insisting wouldn't cause any more harm than she already did every time she made that elf uncomfortable with her one-sided displays of affection. “Sev, is there anything else you want to tell me?”
“I…”
The way the elf looked at Tristessa was, for a split second, heartbreaking. There were feelings there that he was suppressing, fighting against the hostility he reserved for Tristessa, the only Stranger he knew personally.
She wanted to believe that this was the Severus she had met when she arrived at Nekrom, wanting to come out into the open; that dashing man, who loved telling jokes and making a bit of a fool of himself, now that the Mercer-Archeos were safe from the Coven and the fear of losing them no longer suffocated him.
“It must be hard trying to be yourself with someone you hate,” she thought, finding another reason to feel her throat tighten and her eyes burn with fresh tears seeking release. “Like Tori, you’ll never reciprocate my feelings…”
“I think your hair would look better tied up.”
Tristessa hadn't expected that answer from the elf, who now had a slight blush reaching the tips of his ears and refused to meet her gaze. He was clearly embarrassed by having taken that first step, which, for Tristessa, it was like the key to a door that had been shut in her face had just turned—not opening it but unlocking it.
“Like this?” She gathered her hair close to the nape of her neck. An alien sensation, as if she had never before experienced anything like it. A localized, undistributed weight, the wind's touch stronger, cold tickles on her neck. “Uh… Sev, I don't remember, but I don't think I ever…”
“You never tied it up?” Severus let out a laugh that, far from increasing the girl's unnecessary embarrassment, sent a wave of nervousness straight down her spine. “Let me help you.”
The blood elf sat down again beside her and, taking the flushed girl by the shoulders, forced her to turn her back to him. Coming from someone who occasionally wore his hair up, Severus knew exactly what he was doing when he took control of the business and removed that cascade of black, silky hair from Tristessa's hands. What he didn't know was the effect it had on her: trembling, excitement and ragged breaths.
She felt like her heart was about to burst.
“My father taught me that tying such beautiful hair in a knot is blasphemy against the body itself,” he explained to her in the meantime. Tristessa didn't know much about elves, but it seemed that hair was an important element in their culture; after all, it was what shone with supernatural beauty when a blood elf absorbed the blood of their enemies. “You know what? I'll give you a piece of my sash.”
“Does it have any special value for you?” she asked, noticing the way Severus spoke of the cloth belt he was wearing.
“Yes… I haven’t told anyone except Jin and Tiara, but this sash belonged to Princess Nyxana Banodias, one of the last noble daughters of my kind. This belt was part of the cloak Nyxana wore when she and her army fought that twisted bitch Ithrendyl and her dragon in the Valley of Fallen Stars,” he explained, his expression a mixture of admiration for one princess and a venomous hatred for another. “The fire of the King of Black Dragons reduced what remained of the army to ashes, but Princess Nyxana survived to tell the tale.”
Severus cut a small piece from his crimson belt and placed it in the gaping girl’s hands, so that she could feel the material, its quality and its intrinsic weight valued by history. Far from being able to comprehend that magnitude, Tristessa looked at that piece of cloth only understanding that it was a cherished object from the man she loved and that was being gifted to her. Making her blush like crazy.
“That thing you’re holding, by some miracle, wasn’t consumed by Saeryon’s black fire. I dare say it must be one of the few objects that survived that dragon’s presence,” the elf added, then took the piece of cloth and tied Tristessa’s hair back in a ponytail. “There.”
“It feels so strange!” she exclaimed once free of Severus’s hands. Hers traced the length of that dark, soft mass until they reached the point where the ribbon was tied, its short ends fluttering away along with the occasional stray strand of hair. “How do I look?”
“Well… You look even cuter.”
“…Sev!”
Turning around with a vigorous smile and a strong urge to embrace the elf, Tristessa not only found the seat empty, but also saw that Severus had stood up and walked several paces back toward the entrance he had come through.
“Don’t misunderstand what I said! I will never have the slightest interest in someone like you, not in a million years! And for the record, I only have eyes for women with long ears, red hair and in their fifties or older!” he warned her, saying almost the same words Tristessa remembered from the day they met. This made her beam at him even more, and as a result he got even more nervous. “A-Anyway, I’ll be right back. You stay there and don’t move for anything in the world!”
“Huh? But why…?”
Severus had already turned around and gone back inside the castle, leaving Tristessa alone, a little confused and lost in thought.
What the blood elf had done had undoubtedly helped to lift her spirits. It was going to be difficult for her to tear down all those fortresses he had built because of the trauma caused by Moebius's shadow and his fundamental hatred for the Strangers. But at least she had found a crack in those high, thick crimson walls; a small hole through which she could see the Severus she had fallen in love with.
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About Arc 2 possible length and content...
