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“You, are the enemy of eternity.”
She raises her hand and gets her sword ready.
“But as the victor I acknowledge your honor.”
The smell of the floor burning and electricity is strong.
“Therefore… I shall allow you to leave Tenshukaku alive.”
The zone were Signora had meet her end is painted in black scorched marks, electro energy still strongly shining bright purple. Nothing remains of her enemy.
The Archon turns around, nothing more is said and there’s no need for more. The message is clear.
She can leave with no problems.
At least for now.
Silently, she turns around and makes her way to the doors, Paimon silently following her.
***
The sound of her heels over the wooden floor loudly echoes over and over again on her head.
“The Raiden Shogun isn’t gonna let us off just like that, right?”
Paimon’s voice is loud against the temporal silence over the courtyard. Worry and fear can be clearly recognized on it.
The earth trembles and the dark sky is set ablaze when a multitude of lightning bolts begin to fall.
There’s an incessant buzzing on her head. There’s something on the air, it makes it feel wrong.
She can’t breathe.
“The air feels suffocating, it must be the Raiden Shogun’s almightiness.”
The wooden of the stairs creaks below her, slowly she begins her descend.
More lighting falls all over the place as she passes by the bodies of the guards slain by the Harbinger.
“One strike from the Shogun, and now Signora’s gone.”
Lightning falls over the stairs, pieces of rock and wood go flying away, leaving behind holes and marks of scorching.
“She got what she deserved, but Paimon still can’t help but feel upset.”
The desperation on the Harbinger voice is now something engrained on her head.
It could have been her.
It’s a thought she doesn’t want to entertain, but can’t help to do so. Had things been different, had she been slowed down by the sheer cold, or slipped on the ice, trip over it, lose her mobility to it, there had been a moment in which she almost lost the feeling on her fingers, many occasions in which the hold over her sword weakened, had she allowed it to happen, had she not gripped the handle even when she wasn’t able to feel it.
It would have been her.
Had the heat been stronger than her resolve, if she had let her sword fall when the metal got hotter and hotter and burned all over her palm, if she had given up to the confusion and debilitation that overcame her when the heat was unbearable, is she hadn’t pushed herself to continue fighting even when the heat waves distorted the world around her.
It would have been her.
“Why are they doing it, why are the Harbingers collecting all the Gnoses?”
Lightning falls its din loud on her head, the world trembles, the air is heavy it feels wrong.
She stops walking.
“Lumine, you’ve got a headache?”
Does she?
One of her hands is on her head now, wrongwrongwrong, somethings wrongwrongwrong.
It could have been her.
“Chin up, let’s get out of this place, Paimon feels, unsettled.”
It hurts, hurtshurtshurtshurtshurtshurtshurtshurtshurts, the air’s wrong, it’s heavy, too heavy, she can’t breathe.
Lightning falls, the air grows heavier, it’s suffocating her.
She continues walking.
“Also, when the Shogun executed Signora with the Musou no Hitotachi, it was unbelievable powerful.”
Executed, gone, nothing remained.
It could have been her.
“It seems impossible to defend against, and is so, we’ve got hope whatsoever of defeating her in combat.”
She keeps walking, the lifeless bodies of more guards keep appearing on her pat. Shock and terror on some of their faces, a brutal and fast ending, one that didn’t even gave them opportunity to fight back or to escape.
Still, at least there’s a corpse to bury unlike their killer.
She wonders, has it been her the one victim to the Shogun, would she also disappear completely?
“So to recap, Yae Miko wants us to go back inside the Plane of Euthymia by the Statue of the Omnipresent God.”
Lighting falls near her, she gives no reaction, and after all she can’t afford to be scared of lightning. At the end she still has to fight against the Shogun against doesn’t she?
“But, we’ll be like lambs to the slaughter, won’t we? M-Maybe we could put this plan on hold for a while.”
Can they?
Lightning falls as if answering their question.
No, no they can’t, the Shogun may have temporally accepted the terms of her being victor of the duel, but it’s just a matter of time until she attacks once again.
The sky roars and illuminates, the earth shakes and rumbles.
And by the look of it.
“There’s the sound of Electro zapping in the air, Paimon can barely breath.”
Their fight will start sooner than she would like.
Will she be the one next to fall?
The air is heavy with Electro, it makes the air heavy with an unwelcomed pressure, it takes hold of her, keeps her unmoving and makes everything wrong.
Wrongwrongwrongwrongwrongwrongwrongwrongwrongwrongwrongwrongwrongwrongwrongwrongwrongwrongwrongwrongwrongwrongwrongwrongwrongwrongwrongwrongwrongwrongwrongwrongwrongwrongwrongwrongwrongwrongwrongwrongwrong.
“Lumine, are you okay? You’re so silent.”
Was she? She hadn’t even realized.
There’s almost nothing but worry on Paimon’s voice, she should probably reply something, assure the pixie that she was good, (was she really?) and be quick to leave the place.
But.
But all this time since leaving the place where the duel took place she has been, strange?
She’s aware of what is happening around her, every bolt that falls and clap of thunder that resonates around the air, she has been hearing Paimon all this time, and she has been paying attention to the Pixie’s presence since the execution.
But.
But the heaviness and pressure all over the air don’t give her opportunity to concentrate and think, she’s just walking until she no longer can, and in her head the fight and its aftermath repeat again, and again.
Thunder strikes and at the distance there’s the sound of screams and metal clashing.
“It sounds like there’s a lot of noise coming from outside Tenshukaku, has a fight broken out or something?”
Is it time for another fight already?
“The guards seem really nervous, let’s go see what the situation is, shall we?”
Eyes half closed barely are able to identify the resistance making its way toward her.
They come at a stop when they see her, faces momentary lighting up.
The heaviness on the air disappears and for some seconds she’s allowed to rest.
And then a massive amount of Electro reappears right behind her.
Ah.
So the fight begins once again.