Chapter 20: And the Lilac Ended Our Worlds
Time around them stopped.
The timid dripping of water from the rocky ceiling offered repetitiveness into their ears. It seemed like it would go on forever since it was the only thing they heard.
Blistering disbelief and the crazed craving for a more satisfactory response radiated like waves rushing abysmally through her body and mind. Everything started corrupting her rapidly, throwing her deeper into her personal empire of betray and despair.
Feeling something like this, yet once again, was overwhelming in a bad way of the term. Eivör found herself in a loss of words and in an endless contemplation of how and why.
In the middle of all this inner chaos, Kollie started slowly backing off while showing that he did not understand a thing through the disgust and stutter of his words.
"No… You're… What are you talking about, idiot?! You're playing a game on us all, aren't you? I-If you are, it's been enough!"
"Oh, how I wish I was."
Maurice spread his arms open and cracked a wicked smile. He started showing praise for Abel's innovative brain.
"I should have expected this from you, Abel, I truly should have…
The analytical type, you say. Well he wasn't careful enough! My mistake, I admit. I overlooked you and your hidden brilliance. Your impressing memory and skill to carefully observe and analyze every little detail are truly astonishing, but then again, they don't make much of a difference. The flow of things is slightly modified now, but the objective is still left unscathed. In fact, it's already over now."
Abel squint her eyes and decided to mentally step up. Somewhere deep in hear head, convincing Maurice to stop whatever he was going to do was still an option.
"Making differences doesn't seem to matter now since the odds seem to be against you. I think you should come to your senses and drop the act hun, three against one is not a wise idea."
"Hm. Sometimes you truly amaze me, Abel. But let's be honest, you're not really a threat. None of you three are, and that's what I perfectly calculated."
"Seems a bit too high and mighty for you to talk about perfect equations when you couldn't even manage to trick us, hun."
"Deceiving you is one thing, executing the plan is another. Everyone believes what they want — it was probably the emotion you held so deeply towards Rö that drove you to question his parting from this world. But it's the truth."
"Cut the crap, Maurice! Like I could believe a single thing you say now!"
"I wouldn't be lying about this. The method I described wasn't entirely accurate, but be sure that his corpse resides in Einstudht district. But as I said, it doesn't make much of a difference now that you know that I have been involved with the Witch's cult. The only people who posed as real threats to me were Masuda and Rö themselves. It was of high risk to let them live."
Eivör's anguish joined in.
"W-Why… Why Masuda…
WHAT DID HE EVER DO TO YOU?!"
The absurdity of it all was that Masuda's lifeline was cut off by someone he trusted — they trusted, for a matter of fact. This drove her to pure anger and distanced her from trusting in someone even more.
But Maurice was an intelligent hard-head. He believed his reasons were solely justified and he wanted to explain why.
"Masuda was one of the main escorting men. He knew most of the Lord's lands like the inside of his pocket. It was too dangerous to proceed further on with him alive. In fact, Eivör, if it wasn't for you and that mission we scheduled, I would have never managed to kill him."
Eivör's eyes started becoming watery. The burden at this point was too difficult to handle. Despite this, Maurice still had the will to continue.
"Thanks to you, I knew his exact location. I also knew you would be in the way, so your death was ordered as well. You slipped by somehow and honestly I wasn't surprised all that much. I think that it's even better this way since" —
"You swine!! How could you say something like that?! S-She just lost… Fuck that, and fuck you!! I-I trusted you…"
Kollie received impact and started shouting and tearing up. Eivör was looking down numbly as she spoke with a quiet tone.
"The mission that day… It was fake?"
"Yes. I set it up just so Masuda could be killed. There was no Lord's insider roaming near Teutoburg, no one in their right mind would even dare to approach that forest anyway."
"So he got killed… For nothing…"
"You said that the escorts posed a threat to you. What about Ester then?"
Abel thought about the only other skilled escorting man. Maurice was quick to answer.
"We had our discussions. Turns out there is nothing a man can do when you threaten to wound the woman he loves, his future wife. Men with weak spots like that should have never started this kind of job in the first place."
As soon as Eivör heard this she quickly raised her head up and exchanged a murderous look to Maurice. Her voice seemed as it was cracking as it persistently delayed the escape of a tortured beast that lied within.
"What… Did you do to Parch?"
"Nothing at all. She was hesitant when I delayed her trip to Einstudht district, so I decided to put her to sleep for a while. She is the splendid and expensive negotiation key, so as long Ester behaves, she will remain healthy and alive."
The thinnest lines of them all separated Eivör from punching Maurice and throwing him in a fainted state. One last question was asked by Abel, which prevented Eivör's fantasies from coming to life.
"And why… Why Rö? If what you're saying is true, why was he executed separately?"
"He was a persistent, cold-hearted madman. I let him wander off to Einstudht district with one last errand, perfectly calculated and set up. The only thing that separated him from you three was that he wouldn't hesitate in killing me if I were ever to be compromised like this.
A fortune that he's gone now, isn't it?"
Eyes of disgust have been fully spread across the rocky room by now. Every frail option that had existed with invisibility of Maurice stopping the act and being innocent of any crime or betrayal had now disappeared even further beyond the visible spectrum — it had wandered into nonexistence.
The Bee, the Python and the Jellyfish were now convinced and fully aware that the Vulture was working against them.
History seemed to be repeating itself. They had all experienced something similar to this in the past. Why was it happening again and was there a way to stop it?
Thousands of different thoughts that suggested the easiest solution circled through them all, but in one unusual moment, Abel let out a smile. What followed after it was a sickening laughter.
HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!
"It's truly a fortune, Maurice, hun!!"
Eivör quickly turned towards Abel with a shocked expression. She thought that she had slowly started losing it, but then she remembered who Abel Zoother truly was. She remembered numbers of their heartfelt talks, as well as the one on the rock in her purged village.
She remembered all of the warm words regarding Rö that were said in trust. Even though sometimes she would call him a "blockhead" or an "idiotic fool", she would never even think of saying something like this and praising his death.
That was not who Abel Zoother was.
"Abel! What are you talking about?!"
"This poor bastard isn't aware of a single thing in the world. You see, Maurice, I work with the Lord as well. You helped me heaps just now, hun."
The dismay in Kollie's tortured eyes started spreading like wildfire. Eivör still decided not to say a thing, but rather to observe the actions of Maurice.
"Rö was a mass murderer, you're right about that. I flipped it through my head more than you could ever imagine, but getting rid of him was just impossible. I considered it as the ultimate task. And now he's gone, who would've expected that you were a traitor as well. The only difference between you and me is that the upper ranks are only toying with you, and you're not even aware of it."
"God damn it! What is this?! Have all of you gone crazy?!"
Kollie couldn't take it no more as he was showing fierce aggression and utter confusion. On the other hand, Maurice still somehow managed to keep his calm.
"You really think this will work on me? I know that you're not working with the almighty one, you're just trying to set up an act in order to distract me."
"What you know is false. They just didn't say a word to you. Do you really think that I, the sly and luscious Python, wouldn't use the opportunity as a magic wielder and secretly work with the top man of these lands? Money is what keeps the world spinning, and I sure as hell received enough of it from working with him…
…Or should I say, from working with the Witch that possesses the grail?"
In this moment, Maurice let out a gasp. Eivör started noticing the sweat on Maurice's body — this was the pure sign of frustration and most importantly, distraction.
While Maurice was thinking it through, Abel moved faster than a bullet. In only a split second, she sprinted to where Maurice was standing, grabbed him by the neck and pushed him against the hard wall of the rocky cave. All of this happened while Kollie took a blink with his dazed eyes.
The defeat in Maurice's eyes started shaping up. Abel let her anger get the best of her and started squeezing him even harder.
"I'd choke you to death now, but if I did that, Eivör wouldn't have the opportunity to punch your rotten teeth out."
"So I… Ghh… Fell for it… And let my guard down, huh…?
"You poor bastard, I would never even approach that pig of a ruler."
"Then… How did you know about the grail?"
When she heard these words, a new gate of hope opened up for Eivör. Even though it didn't have anything to do with her, she felt peculiar ease and warmth around her heart when she realized that the item the boy and his pitch black cat searched for truly existed.
"It's something Eivör heard about and told me. Thought I'd test it out. Due to your uneasy reaction it turns out it really exists."
"Haha… Ghh…"
"What're you laughing for? I'll tie you up in my serpents and from there you will spill out all the information you have, you filthy traitor."
"I said… That it's too late, didn't I… Haha" —
Abel released the most vigorous punch she could have, landing a hard hit right to his stomach. She beat the air out of him, but the reaction he was giving seemed like it was more than that.
Out of a sudden, Maurice's skin slowly started fading to black, forming abstract shapes that were gaining structures of feathers. Abel's grip became nonexistent as his neck completely disappeared. After only a couple of otherworldly seconds, he had vaporized in the feathers of a vulture.
Abel still stood close to the wall as her hand lifelessly flailed down in a vertical parallel with her body. It was hard for her to convince herself what she was present to. The same applied for Eivör and Kollie, but they had absolutely no time to think it through.
A shadowy silhouette appeared behind the two.
"Now I really despise you, Abel. But then again, what to expect from the Python?"
And it was precisely who they so desperately didn't want it to be. Maurice stood tall and bold, without a single scratch or bruise on his skin. The expressions that lied within the two were more than petrified at this point.
"There is a second part to the story that no one knows about. Let me tell you what happened to the lilac."
—
Throughout the decades where war was occurring ever so often, the girl finally stopped growing up and aging. She came to be the strongest Witch out of them all, even though at the time, there weren't many.
She let go of the horrible past she endured and decided to do something that would change her soul and bring everlasting peace unto it. She burned down her mother's house and decided to visit the newly built districts.
She moved to Pfeinzig district, one of the leading districts at the time. There she settled down, studied alchemy and performed various rituals in order to gain more knowledge about magic itself.
After almost a hundred and ten years, with the help of her precious lilac that she had been reviving and giving life for so long, the Witch discovered the "Flower of Life" which was the peak of both alchemy and magic.
The "Flower of Life" is a geometrical shape composed of multiple evenly-spaced, overlapping circles arranged in a flower-like pattern with six fold symmetry like a hexagon. The perfect form, proportion and harmony allow it to be containing ancient religious value depicting the fundamental forms of space, time, and most importantly, unlimited magic.
However, the "Flower of Life" wouldn't work without the Witch's lilac placed right in the centre of it. So, once the Lord almighty found out all about it, he preserved the lilac so it would never dry down and die.
Many decades later, the "Flower of Life" was used for the first time for the intention of dividing something and not creating it.
One of the Witches decided to enter the "Flower of Life" without permission and sacrifice all of her abilities. Her magical powers split into seven, leaving seven holy grails behind her.
The seven holy grails were filled with her blood. The disobedient Witch drank from one of the seven holy grails right on the spot and took the other six with her. Along with the six holy grails, she also took the lilac.
After this, the lilac was reported as stolen and the "Flower of Life" was no longer in function. But the Lord almighty didn't fall to dismay, no. There was a reason he was proclaimed as the obsolete leader of our lands.
During the next couple of years, the Lord was working hard in order to revive the "Flower of Life". In the end, he was not successful, but he didn't fail either. He managed to revive half of it, but the main missing ingredient was still the Witch's lilac.
—
"In order to hunt down the thief, he firstly needed to get through us. This is where I managed to find the Lord and make a proposal. Using half of the "Flower of Life" and Witches magic, I was given another percentage of power within me. In return, I promised to bring some of you to him and kill the rest.
This is what happens when the particles of magic double — quite handy, I won't lie."
Eivör glanced to the side, spotted a pocket knife on the table and quickly reached out to it. Maurice followed her with his dead eyes, but before he could react, he realized that a punch was coming from the counter side.
Kollie was inches away from landing a punch straight to his miserable face, however Maurice grabbed him by the wrist and started squeezing it all while handing an eerie look in return.
The look was ceased right when Eivör attacked him with the knife she managed to grab. Unfortunately, Maurice blocked the hit with his other unoccupied hand and got stabbed right in the palm. Small drops of blood started escaping from his skin.
"Gh… You all are so persistent."
"Someone recently taught me how to be."
As soon as Eivör dragged the knife out from his hand, Maurice fiercely swung it and it traveled all the other way to Kollie, hitting him in the face and making him fall down.
With a swift slide of the eyeball, Maurice somehow managed to register the second stab coming from Eivör and using both hands he disarmed her and held her by the wrists. The knife fell down, leaving a hard echo.
Maurice seemed to show no understanding towards Eivör or anyone else, which only made her realize that he was a rotten soul from the very beginning. She lifelessly stared into his hatred-driven and ignited eyes until she decided to ask him a question with a breaking tone.
"Why…? Was it worth it?"
"I can still bleed, but you'd be surprised what this body can do. I would do anything that would offer a chance for payback to my father, even if it meant sacrificing a few years of my life."
[Sacrificing a few years...?]
"With this, hatred and agony can finally vanish. The Vulture was blessed with prosperity, and no one can" —
A couple of strands from Eivör's silky hair started falling down. She blinked two times, only to realize that she was a millimeter away from the sharp pin of an assassin's blade.
She shockingly looked up to Maurice's face and saw bright red fluid coming out of his mouth. His expression drastically changed within a second.
Maurice was stabbed in the back and through the stomach by a silver polished blade. At first she thought that this was the doing of Abel who somehow snuck up on him, but as soon as Maurice moved his head to the side, Eivör saw the weeping face of Ester Álfný.
Pressure was getting lighter and as soon as Ester dragged the blade out of him, Maurice let go of Eivör's hands and fell down to the rocky ground all while red was pouring out of him.
Kollie stared with his hand covering his mouth, while Abel still stood close to the wall with no signs of regret or empathy towards the stabbed man.
They all existed in silence until Ester cried through his feeble words.
"O-Only a monster could do something like this, a-and you are one… This is for Masuda…"
"Ester…"
"I-I can't do it… I-I can't pretend like this, knowing what he had done… But I swear on my life, Parch, I will find you… I won't let them harm you!!"
Eivör didn't know what to say to Ester. His posture was weak and his blade pointed down towards the now bloody ground, his eyes were watery and his head was dizzy.
This was man's true weakness. Anyone can break or do things they would never expect to do and feel things they would never in a million years expect to feel when they find a loved one and that same loved one is put in danger. They feel like they would solely do anything in their power to protect them and save them, even if it meant giving up their own life.
Eivör was becoming more and more aware of this, especially after slightly experiencing something like it on her own.
She began reaching out her trembling hand towards weeping Ester with a goal of telling him that everything will be alright and reassuring him that Parch will safely be rescued, but until she could execute that, Abel's screaming voice interrupted her.
"kollie, the knife!"
Kollie quickly turned to his side and noticed that the pocket knife that Eivör dropped wasn't there anymore. He looked up towards Abel and saw her running back to where Eivör and Ester were standing. He redirected his sight one more time and saw the grim figure of Maurice standing right behind Ester.
With no kind of hesitation, Maurice slit the throat of Ester with the knife.
His weeping stopped. His face was quickly becoming pale, taking the color of pure white.
Eivör's hand was still expanded and stretched out in the air, but it wasn't moving. Her eyes widened horribly and the despair that persistently kept following her around now might've even fully killed her on the inside.
Ester's body fell to the ground and started drowning in black feathers of Maurice's corpse that had now completely disappeared.
Eivör looked down and the nightmarish image slowly started carving itself in her brain. Before it could fully paint a masterpiece on her hemispheres, Abel pushed her out of the way and they both fell down near to where Kollie was.
Maurice looked at the feather-covered corpse with pain and spoke out a few words while still bleeding.
"Ghh… All of this is becoming highly miscalculated… Ghh… These wounds, too… It didn't have to be like this, Ester…"
All three of them sat on the cold ground and stared disgustingly at the monstrosity that Maurice became, or for that matter, always was.
From this point on, Eivör became absent. She was physically there, but her soul wandered off into another place. Even when Kollie started shouting so loud that it felt like someone was sawing the insides of his throat and even when Abel stood up and decided to face Maurice once and for all, Eivör could barely notice it.
Sometimes there are moments for every living being where determining and telling reality apart from dreams can be quite difficult. There are also moments of difficulty in finding even a slight difference between reality and a nightmare.
Eivör was in that kind of situation.
Who is to say that a personal hell cannot be created through an excessive amount of despair and sorrow? When a human nears the borderline of insanity — of hell, they will look for anything in this world to make them even temporarily safe and conscious, since once you cross the borderline, coming back appears near impossible.
Eivör reached out to her pocket with trembling hands. The gentle tips of her fingers started feeling the roughness and coldness of a small and shiny silver ring.
She pulled it out of her pocket and started looking at her reflection in the ring despite the chaotic and dynamic happenings around her.
She was most certain that someone else was beside her in that heavenly reflection, holding her tightly and gently caressing her hair.
It was as if she started melting — she wanted to be there so badly. Her eyelids slowly approached each other and started closing the gap. Once they closed and everything became pitch black like that one little benevolent cat, Kollie roughly patted her on the shoulder and started shouting.
"Eivör! Eivör!"
She didn't reply, so he tried once more.
"Eivör! Abel needs our help!"
She looked up and noticed Abel furiously approaching Maurice. Then she looked at the corpse of Ester which was losing itself in the ordeals of black feathers.
"H-He killed him…"
"I know! B-But, we have to focus! At least for now!"
Eivör adjusted the angle of her sullen head back to where it was. She was still lost in the reflections of her mother's ring.
By now, Abel was face to face with Maurice. He was holding his hand nervously on his stomach, covering the deep wound and all of the spilling blood.
Snakes already entered the cave and surrounded Abel. The snakes weren't mighty in numbers, but they equally shared Abel's wrath.
A fearful command was thrown and the snakes obeyed. They were wrapping around Maurice's body and around his neck with a goal to choke him and put him to sleep permanently.
Only seconds after, Maurice was drowning in hungry serpents. Looks like Abel chased the irony of it all.
But something was off. Maurice barely dug his way up through the serpents, and with only his nose and mouth peeking out, he started shouting.
"I said that it was too late, didn't I?!"
Abel stared at Maurice silently with eyes of despise.
"She is already here!! Please meet Salbjörg, the Witch of Fire and Light!!"
A high-pitch noise suddenly attacked the ears of them all. Everything in front of them rapidly started becoming bright white until they couldn't see no more.
Abel put her hand on her forehead, trying to block the flashing brightness. It was no use since it only kept getting brighter. She quickly tried turning back to see if the other two were okay, but all she saw was dull white.
She started shouting Maurice's name out of pure anger.
Kollie was only inches away from Eivör, but as the brightness kept getting stronger, he would lose sight even of her. He tried extending his hand but he would feel no one beside him.
Lastly, Eivör stood up. She tried talking to herself and realizing where she was.
To be honest, it looked like heaven — a peaceful equilibrium, even next to the constant noise that slept in her ears. She looked back down at her silver ring and let out silent words.
"You were right.
But you're still a fool."
A figure draped in all kinds of oversized cloth appeared behind Eivör.
Her hair was as long as the river beside the garden, almost touching the floor that she stood on.
Her robe was as vivid as the garden of roses. The strong red robe supported by purplish details covered most of her hands, which had dozens of geometrical symbols carved in them.
Her face was the unknown. It was mostly hidden in bandages, but Eivör got a full glance of her luscious lips. However, once she smiled, Eivör received shivers up her spine.
Her teeth were as sharp as the roses' thorns and her tongue was even longer than the river in which all of her brothers drowned.
Eivör stared at the devilish figure and realized that this was no heaven that she had arrived in.
She let out a couple of whispers before she too completely vanished into the whiteness of it all.
2
After the incident of the outburst and attack of the Wolf on the military, all the entries leading into Einstudht district were temporarily blocked off. Due to this, the district slowly started entering its economical decay.
Supposedly, suppliers and travelers from all around the lands were forbidden to enter the district unless with a permission slip granted by the higher ranks of the military – at least for the time being.
Needless to say, due to all the chaos that had been going on in the outskirts and inside of the district itself, foreigners became less fond of visiting it. On top of that, many large food and textile companies have crossed Einstudht district out of the regular routine delivery districts, while workers at other companies got dismissed for not wanting to visit the district.
Even if the authorities proclaimed the Wolf as dead, people still feared that the others of the seven were lurking around, seeking revenge.
Either way, it was a lose-lose situation.
It wasn't different for the people inside the district. Raising revolutions was coming off too strong due to the all around armed military and the recent events, however some riots were seen here and there — most of them couldn't be stopped by the military due to a fine number of assigned duties and a small number of available officers.
However, this was not where the chaos had weakened. If anything, it had only started igniting. Almost a day after the proclamation of the Wolf's death, a report was handed in to the Marshal Capital by new recruits, saying that it came from an unknown sender. The report unfolded the seven's current hiding spot.
Without any wasted time, the special forces of Marshal Capital, led by Commander Javor Bewinsky, rushed to Azura Mountain in search for the hiding spot.
When the special forces and Commander Javor arrived at the spot, they had found themselves in utter confusion and pure shock.
The whole place was blown to smithereens and left in ruins – and this was the location that the report had revealed. After inspecting the rocky ruins, the special forces found one injured woman who was unconscious, but still alive. They took the woman and carried her back to the district, whilst serving her immediate medical attention.
Later on when arriving back to Einstudht district, the military had identified her as an insider who was supposedly working with the seven.
She had been accused in taking part of the vanishing of the seven and had been scheduled to a testimony.
This is the testimony of Parch Rosendale.
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