Leona flicked her hand contemptuously, deflecting the bullet with her sorcery. She watched as Lily made short work of anything that came near her. All of the centuries that she had used her sapphire blade were showing in the effortless grace with which she destroyed her opponents. The enemy had almost perfect armour... it was proof against almost any blade, even lily’s, but no armour can cover everything and the crystal sabre slipped into every gap and turned every strike into a killing blow.
Rio had also joined the battle though she was struggling. The invader that she fought with was pressing her hard. Her foreign fighting style kept him confused but the pressure she faced stopped her from turning the fight and killing him. Leona built up her will and used it to charge the air around her hand. She flung her arm out and the crackling erupted with a blue-white light as the bolt reduced Rio’s opponent to dust. The strike was well timed as a second soldier charged her.
The city was almost completely aflame as Leona reached out with her mind to see their surroundings. The city gates were wide open and the enemy was flooding in while the black uniformed elites were sowing havoc inside. She found Faden in the very thick of it. He was cutting them down like children or even crops. The city’s population was in full panic and almost everyone was running. Even the city guard were in full retreat. What was left of the garrison was holding on gate to the west for the civilians to escape though the East Empire’s forces were fighting fiercely for it.
“Lily!” Leona called. “We’ve got to move west! There’s a gate still open there!” Lily nodded and intercepted Rio’s attacker and killed him on the spot with a point accurate thrust that cleaved through his heart. As he died he slid off of her blade with a gurgling sigh. Breaking into Faden’s mind to tell him, however, was impossible. The sword had him completely in its grip. “Shit,” she whispered harshly under her breath.
As Lily and Rio left for the last way out of the blazing city Leona was left alone in the street as the burning buildings around her crashed to the ground, sending smouldering splinters out into the night sky. She pulled in her will, focussing on Faden’s location. It was difficult for her. She had not struggled with anything like this for many decades. The changing environment around him was shifting so fast that she could not find a safe spot from which she could emerge. If only Valen had found a way to shunt everything out of the way before you got there.
As she finally found somewhere she pushed herself over into the darkness – but she stayed exactly where she was. She hissed and spun around. She felt the world around her and it was empty. There was no magic to speak of.
She spotted the reason at the end of the street. A single man stood, looking at her. He wore the same uniform as the others that lay dead in the streets. His shaven head revealed the scars of his battles and even from here she could see the ruthlessness in his ice cold eyes. Most of all she noticed the black pendant handing from his neck. A ward-stone of the most ancient kind was set in its centre.
With a thought her glaive was in her hand. She may not be able to use complex spells but the simple ones were more than possible at this distance. Only when he got close enough would her magic be truly worthless. She tried calling out to Lily but that was useless as well.
The nameless soldier levelled his pistol at her and pulled the trigger. The flintlock spat as the blackpowder ignited and sent the deadly ball of spinning metal at her. She had to pour almost everything into her mind as she deflected the shot from its true destination inside of her skull.
Even as she did so he was moving. She steeled herself. He was not going to underestimate her. The question of how much he knew played in her mind. Knowledge of magic had all but faded from the world. No one aside from the disciples, Lily, herself, Faden, Alice and the Angels knew about sorcery or necromancy or any of the other arts but this one didn’t even bat an eyelid as his perfect shot was stopped and thrown aside by some unseen force.
She readied her weapon as he closed the distance. She had not spent all of her time devoted to her study of magic. She had been trained by some of the greatest masters of combat. This man would find out how deadly she could really be. His charge did not so much falter as much as it simply slowed as if he had meant only to close distance and not use his momentum to his advantage. Leona watched, ever ready for his attack.
He circled with his weapon, a cruel looking cutlass, held low and light. He tried to circle but she kept him in front of her and made sure of what was behind her. He was smiling. She could sense from here he enjoyed war. Not just combat but war and everything that entailed. He would mourn the loss of his comrades later but for now he was happy in this theatre of death.
His first attack took her by surprise not with its timing but its method. He swung far too early and carried himself forwards. By the time she reacted it was too late. His blade was parallel to the pole of the glaive and braced against it so that no block or counter could be executed. She dived sideways to avoid the blow and rolled across the stony road.
His onslaught followed her swiftly. Even as she rose he was trying to press her. She blocked every hit as if her glaive were a staff, shifting every time he attempted to leave her with a few fingers missing. She shifted backwards and thrust out at him and watched as he parried and countered. As his blade sped towards her she danced sideways and spun her glaive, catching him in the side of the head with the blunt side. He staggered backwards as Leona surged forwards.
He recovered almost instantly and met Leona’s charge head on. He judged every strike perfectly and parried each of hers. He guessed at each of her feints, He withdrew each time she mocked a retreat and ignored every feint attack. He left no opening for her in his guard. Only the grace of having a longer weapon bought her any room to manoeuvre – she could counter before any strikes could get close to her.
The two were left facing each other. Neither could make a move against the other. For a time they eyed each other warily before charging again. Their blades flickered with the height of speed that could be achieved by humans unaided. Sparks flew as blade met blade. Leona’s eyes were almost blazing with fury as she lashed out again and again.
The sky above them was clear but the final strike was accompanied by a whip-crack of thunder. Leona lunged forwards and skewered the man through the chest, shattering the ward stone as she collapsed to her knees. She could feel the warm pulse in her chest through the pain. Her opponent was dead, but her new attacker was unseen and he had already done his job. Her thoughts receded as she realised the bullet had left her heart in pieces.
She smiled up at the stars as she reached out with her mind one last time in her last moments before the bleeding hole in her chest claimed her life. If she had not looked earlier she would never have found her sister in arms in time. She brushed at the edges of her cousins mind with one enduring thought.
-When you find him, Lily... tell him that I never stopped looking...-

The last gate was under siege. Rio watched as wave upon wave of soldiers moved against them. There were none of the black clad operatives among their ranks but their numbers alone made them formidable. She wiped the sweat from her brow along with her silvery hair that threatened to blind her at the wrong moment if it remained where it was.
There were less than six of the guards alive and they were on the walls, sending arrows out into the crowd. They had been instructed in no uncertain terms to keep their fire far away from herself and Lily. So far there had not been too much trouble. Both of them were funnelling their opponents through doorways which had become so clogged with bodies they had been able to leave them safely and move to another spot that had similar defences.
Rio sighed as she holstered her pistol. She’d run out of bullets a while ago but she only now had the time with which to stow it away. She wondered how tired the humans were. They didn’t have demon blood running through their veins so they had a need to rest much greater than hers. Her strength was serving her well here, too. Several times she’d had to down an opponent with a well timed boot-in-the-face.
Rio watched as Lily cut through them. It made her feel helpless. She felt helpless anyway. She had never liked killing. Stealing, brawling and naval battles were one thing... but killing others face-to-face under any circumstances seemed alien and repulsive. She had done it though – on a few occasions where she had too. Seeing Lily do it like she had mastered the art made her shiver at the very core of her being. She stared as the small woman gutted a huge brute of a grunt soldier.
And what happened next she would remember for the rest of her life. Lily stopped. Even as the enemy swarmed to her she stopped. Any of them that got close were simply pushed away by some unseen force. The look on her face haunted Rio for years to come – the ghost pale visage and the eyes wide with such a feeling of loss and horror that Rio could feel it herself.
One soldier got close and lashed at her with his crude blade. Lily caught it with her bare hand and Rio could only look on in horror as her right arm writhed with bulging muscle and the woman’s fingers fused to form three razor sharp claws. Slowly, Lily’s body became armoured with chitinous plates. Her face began to glow, blazing like the city itself. In her terrible form her face looked both beautiful and awful. Her hand snapped the rusty blade it held like a twig.
Her sword shattered though only to reform instantly. Each shard grew and joined the others. The blade wrapped around itself to form a curved, crystalline claymore reflecting the burning red of the conflagration of the flaming city. She stabbed her attacker through the chest with it, sending human debris flying onto his comrades. Rio could see they were at breaking point now... then again, so was she and Lily was her ally.
The deadly blade arced sideways, bisecting the dead brute. That, however, was not the intention. The sword sent out an arc of energy that cut everyone in front of her for three hundred metres in half. Buildings collapsed under the force of the crackling, crescent beam. There was nothing within that reach that remained standing aside from the solitary house that Rio watched from and the gatehouse itself.
The dreadful display, however, was far from over. A scream echoed into the night. It was not of pain or of anger, but of an unspeakable rage and a loss so profound tears of pity and fright fell from Rio’s eyes.

The sword felt her slip from the world... Leona had passed into the darkness which she had served for the first part of her life. The sword had known this would come to pass. In fact, it had planned for it. It still, however, felt the pain most clearly. It was forged from unyielding metal but it contained a small part of its true master’s will and it was bound entirely to its wielders heart and so, respectively, it knew endless sorrow that had occurred and it could also feel it keenly.
The host, whose consciousness, was now no different from that of the sword itself, dropped to his knees with tears streaming freely from his inky black eyes. The full battalion of troops of the Eastern Empire remained wary of the knight who had fallen but advanced nonetheless. He could see them – all of them. He could see their lives and each one had worth. All of them were simply following orders... but this could not be allowed to slide into a forgotten grudge.
He screamed out into the night, bellowing the anguish into the night sky above the battlefield outside the city walls. The cry, which was only an expression of the sword’s mourning, sent out a shockwave that pulverised the wall behind him and flattened the army before him. As they rose they gazed upon what demon had replaced the warrior that they had faced.
He stood a whole foot taller than any man within hundreds of miles and shining black armour plates covered him from head to toe. There were no chinks or weaknesses or vulnerabilities in the flawless suit of dark metal. The sword remained the same. The Knight removed his helmet and tossed it to the ground. They could all see him now. They did not face a human here but a demon from the darkest and most hopeless of nights.
His face was well defined- even handsome if it weren’t for the white, dead flesh that remained perfectly undecayed. His inky black eyes that had been unnerving before were now dreadful in the truest sense of the world as they held the wrath of dying stars and encompassed the vast gulf between galaxies. His black hair framed his face to make it look as if it were a separate apparition from the unholy armour. As he spoke he revealed that all of his teeth were sharp to a point with his canines three fold the length of any human’s. His words were simple, true and horrifying.
“I am the Black Paladin...” he whispered with a harsh quiet, though all present could hear it. “I am death,”
At that the entire force turned to flee. Not one of them escaped. The shadows of the night wrapped around their ankles, trapping them there as the Paladin advanced. Some of them screamed, others passed out of consciousness with fear and a few swung their weapons at the grasping blackness.
In response, abyssal nightmares rose from the living shadows. They took different forms. Some were hulking beasts that began to tear the soldiers apart with a dreadful ferocity or a sickening slowness. Others were women who reached down the soldier’s throats and tore out their innards only to splatter them on the ground. Many of the invaders, however, were simply swallowed by the blackness.
Behind the vampire rose another horror. This terror was not composed of a hollow darkness like the others. This one was forged of rotting flesh, putrid blood and mossy bone. The undead dragon clawed its way out from the shadows, obeying its master’s call as it reared above him, its decaying reptilian body stretching up into the sky before it snapped back down, belching out clouds of black gas.
Everything in the way of the cloud disintegrated. All life was drained from whatever the substance touched. Those that were still alive screamed as the cloud rolled towards them even though they had no idea what it did. The utter silence behind its advancing back spoke for itself. None survived.
The Paladin turned to the city. None remained there, either. The only survivors were civilians aside from less then ten soldiers, Lily and Rio. He sensed Alice watching the burning city from the hilltops. The child shivered beside her as he wept silently for the death and tragedy that had stained the city of the high preists. The sword relinquished its grasp on the boy, Faden, and allowed him to sink to the floor until his consciousness returned.

He watched from his lair. This was becoming interesting. The otherworld was raging with turmoil as its peace was disrupted. The endgame, he noted, was approaching. It would require a neutral hand as well. There were few that could fill that role and he held the most power out of those few.
He smiled. Maybe this one was worth waking up for.