"Impressive,"
Alisax remarked as I threw the mutilated corpse of an Abyss Hound onto the growing pile of dead, grotesque creatures.
The mangled bodies piled high, steaming with the lingering heat of their demise.
It had only been a few days since we left the relative safety of the ruined mansion.
Alisax was about to engage the hounds herself, but I stopped her.
After my energizing rest, I was itching to cut loose.
There were more than a hundred of those ugly mongrels. Their numbers made no difference. I slaughtered them all.
"Even without an arm, you are formidable," Alisax said, her voice vibrating with a faint echo from the darkness underneath her shifting hood.
She watched as I approached the mound of corpses, blood still seeping from my left hand.
I channeled the blood through my fingers, igniting it into a swirling mix of crimson and black flames.
With a flick of my wrist, I sent the Bloodfire cascading over the dead hounds, the flames roaring to life as they consumed the bodies.
The heat followed in a violent wave, washing over us, while the flames licked hungrily at everything my blood had touched.
The light from the fire dimmed as it met the inky darkness under Alisax's hood, but I could sense her invisible gaze fixed on the inferno.
She remained still, seemingly entranced.
"Fire born from blood," her distorted voice echoed, laced with awe. "You have a unique and interesting ability."
I smiled faintly, watching the fire burn. "Bloodfire isn't unique to me. I had a good teacher."
The image of Vanis Hectus surfaced in my mind—her cold, heterochromatic eyes, and the unwavering seriousness that defined her expression.
Wandering through the Abyss had given me too much time to think. Long enough to sort out my thoughts.
One of them was about Vanis. She became more involved in my life after we made our peace in that graveyard.
She didn't just help me master blood crystallization and taught me to wield Bloodfire. She pushed me to my limits as a sparring partner.
She was always relentless, never pulling her punches and her chastising. Her words were just as brutal as her attacks.
She told me stories of her time as a Paladin and even how Iris had once saved her.
If I'm being honest, Vanis was everything Morgan, the Crown Princess, had failed to become.
An older sister.
Vanis wasn't the only one. Dorothy, Master Lorvar, the Doc, even the Lunatics—they had all become family.
Even Kay, though his uncle-ness could be a bit much at times.
I smirked to myself, briefly thinking of the challenges Artemis might face with the returning core members of Unit 21.
But Vanis would back her up. I was sure of it.
My attention returned to Alisax, who was still turned toward the flames, her form rigid beneath her cloak of shadows.
"You look like you've never seen a fire before," I teased, a grin tugging at my lips.
Alisax turned slightly, the darkness that replaced her face dipping toward me. "We Lumini were beings of light. We did not need fire or any other source of illumination or heat," she said, her voice oddly wistful. "However, this isn't the first time I've seen fire."
"And you are not the first human I've met."
I froze, my eyes narrowing. That statement lingered in my mind like an unsolved riddle.
The way she spoke—it wasn't just her unnatural fluency with my language. She had mentioned back when we first met that human speech had 'evolved' over millennia.
Which meant only one thing.
She had met humans before.
A human who had entered the Abyss long ago, through a Tear.
A flash of memory hit me—a tall knight, clad in brilliant white armor, eyes blazing with light.
"Alisax," I began cautiously. "This human you spoke of… did they wear white armor?"
She seemed startled by the question, the shadows around her shifting. "You know Alexander?"
My heart pounded. I nodded slowly. "I've heard of him. Alexander Zierhart, a legendary Paladin who entered the Tear millennia ago."
My fist clenched, the memory of that vicious battle in the Sanctuary of Light surging forward. "I fought his brother, Isaac. Well, his spirit."
"Isaac Zierhart?" Alisax tilted her head slightly, curiosity in her voice. "Alexander did tell me he had a brother."
"How do you know him?" I asked, falling in step beside her as she started walking, her form trailing shadows behind her.
Her distorted voice grew wistful. "It was during my time as Luminus. We encountered him during one of Queen Phoebe's travels."
"We found him in a village, seeking shelter in the home of a lone Luminus who had kept his existence a secret," she continued, a faint chuckle escaping her. "Unfortunately, you cannot hide anything from the Queen."
Her tone softened, her voice becoming almost reverent. "When Alexander saw her, he fell to his knees instantly, bowing his head in absolute reverence. He seemed to instinctively know who she was."
"The Queen recognized him as one of the humans she had spoken to."
"Well, he was a Paladin from the Order of Lux," I shrugged, keeping my tone casual, though the weight of history pressed down on me.
"Indeed," Alisax agreed, her voice shifting slightly as if she was caught between admiration and something deeper. "He was a bold man, but his strength backed up his words."
She paused, and I noticed her rubbing her arm awkwardly. "I challenged Alexander to a duel… to show him the superiority of a Luminus." She looked away, as if embarrassed. "He defeated me."
I whistled low, impressed.
Isaac Zierhart was an intermediate S-rank being, and I'd guessed Alisax's strength was on par with Asphodel.
For Alexander to have bested her, he had to be at least a Master S-rank.
"You had a thing for him, didn't you?" I asked with a mischievous grin, unable to resist.
"A daemon and a human. Interesting."
"I… I wasn't a daemon back then!" Alisax retorted, her shadowy form stiffening. "And he was quite the remarkable man. It's only natural to feel something!"
If she had a face, I imagined it would be turning red. Shadows seemed to ripple awkwardly across her form.
"Hey, no judgment here," I laughed. "It's not a bad thing to be attracted to someone, even if they're from a different race."
She shot me a dark look, literally, the darkness underneath her hood pierced into me, her distorted voice warning, "I would advise you to keep your silence regarding that, Mordred."
I raised my hands in mock surrender. "Alright, alright. I'll stop."
Silence fell between us as we continued walking, but my thoughts lingered on Alexander.
He had willingly entered the Tear and was likely the only human to ever lay eyes on the Lumini.
But there was something more. Alisax had referred to him in the past tense.
My chest tightened as I asked, "Alisax… what happened to Alexander?"
She stopped abruptly, and I felt a wave of coldness sweep over me. A faint pressure began to settle around us, like the tightening of unseen chains.
"He died," she whispered, her voice hollow. "He rushed to help Queen Phoebe, despite my pleas… and was killed by the Darkling."
The grief in her words cut through the air, raw and unfiltered.
I chose my next words carefully. The last time Alisax spoke of the past, her rage nearly crushed me.
"Will you remain calm enough to tell me what happened?" I asked, preparing myself for the weight of her aura.
She turned to face me, her shadowy figure towering, and for a brief moment, I felt the crushing pressure before it dissipated.
"I am calm, Mordred," her distorted voice echoed again, quieter this time. "But you must know. You must understand the betrayal that destroyed us."
I held her eyeless gaze, my voice a low murmur. "The Darkling?"
Alisax nodded slowly, the tension building as she spoke. "It was during one of the Queen's travels, just like when we met Alexander."
"She found the Darkling in a town… an outcast, shunned by her people. She was a Luminus, like us, but blessed by Tenebris, not by Lux. A being of utter darkness. A mutant," Her voice dripped with loathing.
"When Queen Phoebe asked for her name, the Darkling replied, 'I go by the name I have given myself.' She called herself Lilith."
The name sent a chill down my spine, and an icy wind swept over the barren landscape, sending shivers through my body.
"Lilith," I whispered.
Alisax's voice filled with contempt. "She is the one who betrayed my queen. The Darkling who now calls herself the Daemon Queen."
"She was a mere outcast when Queen Phoebe found her," Alisax continued with utter contempt, her voice distorted and sharp.
"Her Majesty then surprised us all by holding out her hand to the Darkling, taking her in." She spat the words as if they left a bitter taste.
"Even now, I wonder what drove Her Majesty to make such a choice. Perhaps it was her boundless selflessness... or pity? She never shared her reasoning with us, though we all had our suspicions."
"I suppose, in a way, they were two sides of the same coin—Queen Phoebe, reserved and steadfast, while Lilith was the most outgoing person I had ever met."
Her head tilted slightly as if recalling a distant memory, the bitterness softening into something closer to melancholy.
"But even then, I could never have imagined the depth of the bond they would forge... or the path it would lead us down."
The daemon let out a quiet sigh. "Queen Phoebe and Lilith—so different, yet so alike. Her Majesty was reserved, barely showing emotion."
"But Lilith, well... Lilith was the exact opposite. She laughed, she cried, she embraced life with all the fire of someone who had everything to prove."
Alisax's tone shifted, tinged with reluctant admiration.
"It wasn't just her warmth and expressiveness that won us over. Lilith had a way of speaking to you as if you were the only person that mattered in the world."
"Even the most hardened soldiers found themselves smiling in her presence. It was as if the darkness she wielded only made her light shine brighter." Her voice caught for a moment, before continuing.
"It wasn't long before she was loved by everyone, a Darkling who shone brighter than the Lux Incarnus herself."
"But none adored her more than Queen Phoebe, who raised her like the sister she never had. The Queen was her protector, her confidante. They shared a bond none of us could touch."
Alisax shook her head slowly, her tone growing colder again. "Lilith excelled in combat and diplomacy. It didn't take long for her to stand beside me and the other commanders as Her Majesty's most trusted retainers."
"We revered Queen Phoebe and our loyalty toward her was absolute, but Lilith? She was the one everyone spoke about."
Her eyeless gaze seemed far away, lost in a time long past. "Lilith was also present when we encountered Alexander."
"She was fascinated by him as if he held the key to some truth she was searching for."
There was a pause, and Alisax's voice turned pensive. "Their conversations lasted for hours—about humanity, about the Order of Lux. At the time, I thought it was mere curiosity."
She clenched her fist, her tone hardening once more. "They had many long talks, where he satisfied her curiosity about humans, and she told him about the Lumini."
Alisax paused before saying what appeared to be the most important part of the story.
"Sometime after Alexander appeared, another human followed, or at least, that's what I recall seeing."
I stopped in my tracks and stared at her. "Did you say… another human?"
There is no way that is possible. From what I learned from Isaac Zierhart's journal, entry into the Tear was forbidden, and there was constant monitoring to ensure no one violated that rule.
The daemons first appeared long after Isaac's passing so there was no accidental falling into the Tear during battle.
Isaac meticulously noted down in the journal the names of everyone who tried to enter the Tear and were stopped.
He was that serious about keeping people from entering the Tear.
From what Alisax is saying, a human entered the Tear after Alexander, avoiding the eagle eyes of Isaac and the Paladins on guard.
Alisax faltered, and the darkness billowing off her flickered as she clutched her head.
"I… don't know. The only thing I'm sure of is that it was a man. I remember seeing him, but…"
Her voice quivered with confusion. "I… cannot remember his face. That is odd. My memory is flawless, yet whenever I try to remember that man, my mind becomes fuzzy."
She shook her head as if trying to shake away the fog that clouded her memory.
"Why can't I remember?" Her voice quivered with an edge of panic, the darkness around her flickering like a flame struggling for air.
The pressure of her aura thickened, bearing down on me. Shadows swirled like a tempest around her form as she clutched her head, trembling. "It's like his face was… erased."
I strode forward and grabbed her hand with a firm grip. "Alisax! Snap out of it!"
My words seemed to reach her as I felt her aura stabilize. Her shoulders moved up and down as if she was taking some deep breaths.
"Thank you, Mordred," she said softly, her voice steadying. "My memory has never failed me before... not like this. It's unsettling."
I frowned as the situation became even more baffling. There's no way that a human could have entered the Tear without Isaac or the Paladins noticing.
Someone entered right after Alexander Zierhart and made contact with the Lumini, and ultimately, the Lux Incarnus. Alisax remembers seeing this mystery man but can't recall his face.
One of Eravon's conversations came to mind. He once told me about an interesting code that could prevent someone from remembering your appearance, making it impossible for them to recognize you.
There's no doubt in my mind that Alisax's memory is as flawless as she claims. She could recall events from thousands of years ago with ease. The only time she faltered was when she tried to remember this man.
Whoever he was, there's a good chance he used the same or a similar code to conceal his identity.
One burning question remained: who was this guy?
"Alisax," I spoke carefully. "You don't remember that man, but do you know what he was doing here?"
Alisax paused and thought about it before nodding her head. "Yes. He said he wished to see Lilith."
"He wished to see the Darkling instead of the Incarnus of Lux?" I asked, unable to hide my surprise at the stranger's peculiar choice.
Alisax nodded slowly. "Indeed. I was surprised as well. But the others… they seemed unsurprised."
Her voice grew softer, carrying a weight of memory. "But I'll never forget the look on Alexander's face when he saw that man. For the first time, I saw absolute hatred and rage in him—raw, unguarded." She paused as if even now struggling to reconcile the memory.
"He called the man a monster and told me to warn Queen Phoebe immediately. At the time, I thought he was overreacting. I assumed they had some history, that perhaps this man was an old enemy of his."
She lifted her eyeless gaze into mine, and her tone grew regretful. "I told Alexander not to worry, assured him our Queen had slain gods before. 'What harm could one human pose to her?' I said."
Her shoulders slumped, and she looked down, her distorted voice heavy with remorse. "Now I can't help but wonder… if I had been more prudent back then, would things have gone differently?"
I know I asked her a lot of times but I couldn't help it. I was hooked on the story. "What happened?"
Alisax looked up to the crimson sky above us, dotted with black stars.
"It all started when the sky transformed into what it is right now. It was an unbelievable phenomenon. The bright dome that spread out above us changed into one of pure nightmares."
"It was then that the Chief Commander, Naberiax approached me and told me something that was nothing short of blasphemy."
She clenched her clawed hand, her distorted voice tight with anger.
"To betray Queen Phoebe and put Lilith on the throne."