'Is her spirit broken already?' Clementine thought as she gave a step towards the woman standing some meters away from her. Violet didn't react, she just kept there, looking at her own hands as if searching for something.
Clementine found it very strange that a very composed woman like her was breaking down so soon. She knew that it was reckless of her to lower her guard, so he kept alert.
Lady Welcome charged her sword backward, making the golden flames around it increase their intensity and quantity. She was aiming for a final attack.
'Even if she is pretending, she won't be able to dodge such an attack. Not in her state. She might be feeling the same weakness in her legs as I was feeling before. There is no way that she can wield Divine Flame like me, so she can't boost her physical prowess to compensate for the handicap as I did.
'I will just make sure not to be lethal... But she will be on the verge of death for sure.'
As Clementine prepared her attack, she put too much concentration into empowering her weapon's flames and keep boosting her body with Divine Flame, so much that she lost her attention to something important: the whip.
With a slight pull of her wrist, Aspidis left Clementine's hand briskly. The latter wasn't expecting it to happen and her heart skipped a beat once she saw the whip being retrieved, sliding across the ground like a serpent.
Anyway, Clementine just sighed. She was finding it a hassle rather than worrying about her health. After all, at this point, as the negative feelings kept increasing in Violet's heart, she wouldn't be able to leave a scratch on her.
Violet finally raised her head and stared at Clementine, her eyes filled with tears and her calm countenance replaced by an expression of wrath.
"I... I admired...!" she said between her gritted teeth, her body shivering with anger. "I admired you more than anyone else in this world!"
After she shouted, she swung her hand, making the whip fly towards Clementine fastly, only to be deflected by Dei Ignus' ablaze blade.
"When I was a kid... you were the person that gave me hope!"
Another fierce attack in which its power didn't match Violet's supposed weakness. However, it got parried again.
"Everyone loved you! You were the hero of our society! You were the greatest hero of all time!"
She attacked three times in a roll as she shouted, all of them getting brushed off like they were nothing.
"You were our biggest objective! Our definitive example! Everyone held so much respect and love for you that you can't even imagine!"
Another attack, and this time Clementine dodged. Violet was panting hard, sweat and tears running down her face, but she didn't stop.
"Why did you turn to their side!? Why can't you be the hero you always were!?"
Another attack. Then, a defense.
"Why? Just why you couldn't stay like the untouchable symbol that warmed our hearts!?"
Attack. Defense.
"What the hell is going through your damn mind for you to act like this!?"
Attack... Defense...
"Why do you think I am struggling so much for!? Why do you think I am so angry and frustrated!? That's because... During all this time...!" Another attack, then a defense. Dei Ignus strongly burst in flames once it hit the whip and brushed it away. Violet fell to her knees, her legs so weak that she could not stand still anymore.
She let the whip fall from her hand, tears flowing down her face, her eyes reflecting the brightness of the golden flames wrapping around Clementine and her sword.
"During all this time all I wanted was to be just like you! Do you know how much it hurts to see you become this person? Do you know how it feels like to fight against your own idol as if you were fighting against a villain!?" she said between her sobs, her choked voice echoing across the church.
"Can't you realize just how much it means to me, Clementine?"
Clementine continued walking toward her with firm steps. However, inside her mind, a war was going on. A war between her emotional side and her logical one.
What she was seeing in front of her was the exact personification of the consequences of her actions. Violet showed through her actions and words what everyone inside the paladin society felt about Clementine. It was hard to see their war hero turning into the villain, it was hard to fight a life or death battle against her.
It was not that Clementine didn't understand what Violet and the others were going through. She just didn't know how to react to it properly, nor how to act otherwise. After all, she wasn't walking on that tough path and carrying that heavy burden just because. She had really good intentions behind her apparently unreasonable actions.
Unaware of what to say, Lady Welcome could just sigh and keep walking toward the crying Violet in front of her. The latter's feelings were so intense that she couldn't even lift her arm anymore. Her body was torpid and weak due to the curse of Aspidis.
With no more, she hit Violet's head with the flat side of her sword. The attack was strong enough for Violet to fall unconscious to the ground. Unfortunately, her face got burned on the left side. Just that brief touch of Dei Ignus was enough to leave a burn of a considerably high degree.
"It will leave a scar, unfortunately. Poor girl," she shook her head while walking towards Aspidis and stepping on its cable, then stomping it hard and breaking her Soul Mirror.
'Her Soul Mirror was very resistant due to its elastic structure. However, even a whip will get as fragile as glass once its wielder falls unconscious or dies. She will wake up feeling a void on her body...'
"Come back, Dei Ignus," she chanted, making her sword of flames disappear, as well as the golden flames wrapping around her body.
"I am very dizzy. Probably, the curse of that whip will last longer to vanish, but it shouldn't take too long from now on since I broke it," she was talking out loud to keep her mind working. She couldn't fall asleep there.
"I think I will go pray again..."
Clementine walked towards the front benches of the church, which weren't shattered like every other bench inside that place.
She kneeled on the ground behind the bench, clasping her hands together, leaning against the bench, then starting to mutter inaudible words that didn't even seem to be in english.
****
Mark felt a chill running down his spine as his sharp senses alarmed him about a battle happening several miles away. However, no Dark Energy was coming from there, just Divine Flame.
'Strange... I am feeling a high amount of Divine Flame being exuded. The only thing I can think of right now is that paladins might be fighting against each other. However, that's just unreasonable. Why would they do something so reckless, to begin with? Or maybe... That woman is already fighting...?'
He was puzzled but tried not to pay too much attention to that matter. He preferred to keep his distance from them and work on finding his brother again.
'If only I could have seen him in his human form... I bet that things would be way easier right now. I don't even know if he is using the name Zed among humans. The closest thing I saw was a character from a game on a random poster of the convenience store... Is he still using our surname, even? I doubt it. Besides, we are not the only Fosters in this city; it will be difficult to sort out who is the right one.'
At that moment, Mark was inside an empty restaurant. He liked silent places when he wanted to reason about something. He wasn't an airhead, after all; although he was very strong, he didn't rely only on his powers to do everything.
'It isn't worth it to just walk around the city in search of my brother. I need something more assertive... If he is really being targeted by the paladins, a ruckus will happen, and it will surely involve him,' just as he thought about it, the person taking care of the balcony turned on the wide television fixed on the wall.
That was another reason why he liked to go to that place: the news. Right at that time, the news about the city would start.
"Ok, going next to the next one..." they, unfortunately, lost some minutes of the program, probably because it started sooner than usual, "Something happened this morning that got the entire city by surprise and left many shocked.
"In just a couple of hours ago, it was confirmed for us the arrest of three important figures of our city, all of them accused of many crimes, particularly one involving the recent kidnaps of children and murderings. What is the most impressive thing about it is that a single man unraveled the truth behind their scheme: the famous detective of MDCI, Tobey Foster.
"More details will be revealed after the commercials."
Mark looked at the smiling face of the female anchor with his jaw dropped.
"Would you like to order something, sir?" the waiter asked with an annoyed tone of voice, appearing suddenly beside Mark. It was the seventh time he was asking that.
"No. I gotta go," Mark said absentmindedly and left the restaurant.