The Children of the Lake 15
Holly dove down to the silt on a guess.
A current brushed her hairs, the only sign of her father's movements. She turned around, sped the other way, but not fast enough. Something struck her midsection, sending her spinning underwater. She punched blindly, eventually hitting solid ground and regaining her sense of direction.
The lake had become too turbid to be seen through clearly. The ever growing waves above disturbed debris and mud below, wracking the once mirror surface. Before she could move, a powerful Nothing settled over her shoulders, weighting her down, but despite everything her father was no God, and so fighting his Will off was no problem.
No, the problem is that she was sure he had expected her to resist. She turned, protecting her chest with her arms, only this time her prediction failed. She was tackled from the side, dragged against the ground, pummeled from all sides, thin edges felt keenly in the pit of her stomach as she kicked, again and again, missing every time.
Enough. Screaming, she threw herself upwards, arms spread in a deathly hug to catch him, but found nobody there. She was crouched by the shore, alone.
No, Not entirely alone. The choir of gurgles grew impatient, its more daring members emboldened into rushing down the shallows with barely concealed need, before her father or her tore them apart. With each passing second their numbers increased, and with it the quality of each, strange figures of incongruous body parts now watching the spectacle from the safety of the woods, obscured by the sheer density of weaker apparitions.
And with these figures came the corpses, some bloated and algae covered, others gnawed into skeletal frames of sloughing skin and hard darkened meat, but all as fixated on her battered body as the others. No gurgling jeer or gasps, only the intense silence of the dead, a single one had dared approach until it was a pace away from the water, and at that moment the grandiose blue flower at the center began to slowly close its petals, the nectar overflowing as such rate it cloyed the air and covered her tongue.
Distracted, Nothing hit her from behind the knees, then the back. Arms that were not Arms flew to protect her, but Nothing slipped through them with such casual ease it was like she had opened the way for it instead.
She fled over the islet, and the lake surged in pursuit. Her eyes widened as the murky surface indented, a river's worth dogging her steps and pushing her back down. She resisted, sinking her feet into the damp earth, but there was nothing she could do against the slipping shade, a serpent bite in the form of a palm blow, crushing her lips against her teeth and taking her off her footing.
She gave up of finding any weakness in her father's grip and trashed, aiming for everything, anything at all, nails unfurled and teeth biting until she got a solid hit. He relented, but she wouldn't, landing one more kick as he disappeared again, the invisible pressure of Nothing still binding her limbs.
She rose, breaking through the surface and gasping by instinct. Air filled her lungs and the relief of breathing again, that she could still breath regardless of need, calmed her. A shiver still went down her spine. She was trapped, with nowhere safe nor any means to convince her father—no, enough of acknowledging him!—to convince Glashii to stop this madness.
A burst of water to her left. The next attack came from the opposite direction, impacting her ribs. Stumbling a few paces, an underwater current tried to pull her off her feet. She dropped, staking a hand through the ground and holding on.
"What does the Blood see in one who mingles with the lice?" Glashii said, disappointment cold to burning. "It should see only your purity. Yet, behold, ignorance being rewarded!" A trembling hiss escaped from in between her teeth. She still couldn't find him. "I should be thankful. It is a sign that hope dies last! No matter how deep its burial." "You don't know anything." The words flooded out of her, almost unconsciously. "Not about me! You don't even know how disgusting you sound!" No reply. The conversation was over, and not a second too early. If she wanted to survive, she had to do one of two things: She had either to find a way to reliably see Glashii coming, or find a way to hide like he did. That latter, specially, sounded promising to her ears. She remembered an ability she had scant few opportunities to use. Her skin changed, its natural pale tone giving way to stone gray with hints of white grain. Seeing it again after so long, she couldn't help but shiver a little. Had it always looked this unnatural? The answer came in the form of an underwater haymaker, right below her ribcage, making her torso flare as if burst open. Screaming, she tried to retaliate, too late. This wouldn't be enough, she needed to go further! Was there a way to imbue it with Will? Change it in any way?! Though both used, well, willpower, both processes were actually completely different, and if there was any common ground between then she failed to find it. No other choice, she took the plunge and approached the Apparitions and their cadaveric counterparts in hopes Glashii would hesitate. When she was dragged back by a great wave that curved towards her back, she was almost surprised again. Instead of being caught off balance, however, she followed the flow, and no more than a couple seconds later collided with something fast and hard, both sent sprawling apart. She took the opportunity to flee, cocooning herself in Will as she tried to coax something out of her color shifts. It was useless, she soon realized, or close to as she felt Nothing pry her, grasping her Nowhere and keeping track of her movements. How was she supposed to make this work in the first place? Was there some spot she was supposed to charge, something she was supposed to will, to flicker, to break?! Unlike that crimson night months ago, her answers did not come by instinct, but neither would they come by trial and error, Glashii gave her no quarter. Slowed by many sore bruises, he caught up fast, landing a heavy blow to her already shattered thigh and drawing a bubbling whimper out of her. She turned, and he was already gone. She abandoned her hopes of stealth, skin returning to its sickly pallor, and spread herself thin. She could cover half the entire shallow lake, and knew that her once-father was Nowhere. He existed where she didn't, moving through her blindspots unimpeded. She had no idea how, no idea why she could notice him without noticing. What was so different between them both that he could and she couldn't? That wouldn't be the shape of his Will, would it? He had felt nothing like her the few times she managed to touch him. Both were exactly as real and solid as one another, but he was slicker, more flexible, maybe colder, though she wasn't as sure of that particular analogy. Soft yet strong, flimsy yet firm, impossible contradictions she couldn't comprehend yet he made effortless. The next kick was the strongest so far, bearing none of that chiding restraint from before. She was launched out of the water with a choked gasp, thrown back to the islet like a toy, struggling to find her bearings as she spat out muddy stems and rotting leaves, which saved her in the end: still too shocked to rise to get up, she was just in the right position to grab onto solid ground with all fours when the river rose again to drag her. Her Will penetrated it in time, mixing along its length and commanding it to return. It slowed, but Glashii's control still held all the sway. She bore the brunt of the impact, knowing he would be coming next. She poured every miserable drop of Will inside, hands grasping desperately for the slightest lucky touch and—there! Nothing elegantly slithering Nowhere, aiming straight at her head as she shrunk back, arms raised to stop him— A second river blew her with enough strength she spun. She felt the crack of ancient bark at her side and hip, the hollow as solid as any wall despite probably years of decay. She fell, retching in pain, into a pool of her own bile, no chance to get back up as a third powerful stream arrived, forcing her against the wood and washing the grody away. Glashii was right there, exposed closer to a shade than a shimmer but never quite either with so little of his body discernible through the illusion. The next wave was calm but devoured the islet whole, leaving her half submerged in an unnatural mound of water that enhanced his camouflage until he was nothing but a distortion of the lake's dim light. Something pressed against her chest, two sharp Nothings digging into her breast as she was turned on her back. "Such loathsome farce." Glashii said, the kind tone outrageous. "A show of possibility never realized. For whose sake?" "G-get off me," she whispered. He retracted a scant distance, then stomped, driving the air out of her lungs. "Centuries of carefully cultivating Mother's love, of building honor, lost in the cooling bodies of our felled family," he said, punctuating by grinding on her solar plexus, "A minute mistake, and our single hope dies spitting, crippling herself out of sheer stubbornness and learned depravity!" Her stomach. Her cracked thigh. Finally, her shin with enough strength to break the bone and ground beneath. She screamed. "Heretic! Blasphemer! Apostate! Never, never, never have I seen the Blood so badly tainted! What should I do to get through your reluctance..." He spat. "I simply cannot! Not here. Consider yourself lucky, your merciful father delays your reeducation, where another would cut their shame here and now!" The moment her leg was relieved of the pressure, she tried dragging herself away, only to be stomped again."Stop! Stop!" "My poor Mariwa, I promise haste. This may seen excessive, but it is love, and nothing compared to the damage you already have dealt yourself besides." "Please, I don't want this," she said, looking up, searching for his face and struggling to puzzle him together "What did I do to deserve this? I won't shame you anymore, I'll hide and you won't ever see me again, just let me go!" It hurt so much. Why was she hurting so much? Having her legs burned off hadn't been half this bad, nor did taking the brutal beating God gave her. She felt the fragments of bone scraping one another too keenly, every darkening blot on her skin pulsing beneath. "That is the problem. Yet worry not yourself, you will be healed. My Mariwa, true recovery lies where your true kin live, far away from dregs, their servile Dashi! I hope you can understand my methods then, with time." Her heart sank. There would be no running away, would it? No salvation, either. Were the others still alive? Rage seeped through. The next stomp came fast, a burst of mud raining from out of view emphasized by one of the sharpest pains she ever felt. She whimpered, hands clenching, powerless, nausea churning her stomach and twisting her eyesight. She had an idea what came next. She tried to flip over and protect her arms, but she was stopped cold. She looked up and saw the lad grinning down at her. Stick thin and tall, with barely enough muscles to earn the name, no scars to really mark him as an adventurer or fighter of any note, but his smile was the stuff of nightmares, stiff and sly with calculated malice. She smiled back at him, all pretense: her heart thumped so hard it was starting to hurt. She was scared, both of him and the chance he might sense her fear through the sole of his reed sandal. The ones who actually got to her always came back for a second bite, and she always won those of course, she was Holly Seneschal! They would always look down on her for being a sinner, a sin, and she would always be there to give them a taste of teeth for thinking so. But this one time, she was honestly afraid. He crouched, and suddenly she couldn't breath. He reached for something besides them, a glint in his eyes. When he got up with some difficulty, she trembled: he had a rock the size of her head in hand, sweetly caressing it's surface like it was his own child. There was no hiding it; her eyes widened and the bastard chuckled. The foot moved, too fast for her get back on her legs and run. It crushed her elbow flat against the ground, and his eyes moved from her face to her hand. She watched, helpless, as he lifted the stone over his head and threw it down— She needed to get out of here. She needed to get out now! But nothing she tried worked. Nothing she knew she was capable of helped. What was left? ...She had an idea. Even if further abilities would not come to her by instinct, they still had to be part of her, right? Still present, if buried too deep to reach, all she had to do was find and reveal it, like God's radicle. If she could hide from Glashii, she would be alright, she had to be alright! Already balled up in her own Will, all she needed to do was turn it on herself. She hesitated for a moment, not knowing what would happen if things didn't go as planned, but she recalled the heavy thud, the wet sound of meat squashed, and knew there was no time to waste. A thousand arms turned towards her core at once, and she activated her revealing ability as they sunk deep, the physical world quickly disappearing around her. The feeling was hard to describe. Like shoving herself elbow deep into her own intestines, with all the discomfort that entailed. Her insides defied description, the tactile analogy she used on all that strange Merurgical or Ashic Plane stuff breaking swiftly against something she could only say was made of herself, had the rough texture of herself. She vaguely felt her body writhe, distant and detached. She pushed her ability to its utmost, felt the warmth of the light caressing its way inside to reveal herself, what made herself herself, what was purged to keep herself herself, and even itself working in an endless cascade of heartbeats or similar motions, but nothing of use. She needed to go deeper. Right below the surface vagaries laid impossible shapes, mesmerizing and absurd sensations that explored their way up perfected fingertips in search of connection and meaning. These had each a million names, but no set words to identify them, crawling over, under, into her gore of gores, tissue and needled veins pumping her into herself, mindless for the waste spilling out like a ruptured stomach. Fingers plucked tendons that were not tendons, fondled paths over squirming organs, clearing ways through meatless meat with no purpose she could learn even when she already knew, floating under the rhythm of context and intent. Intent? So it was, or had been, until the interruption. She shivered, realizing her mistake. She had been right to hesitate, this had been the wrong way of reaching in, and now she had left countless wounds into her being, disturbing the fragile system that here thrived. She was not what she had been months ago, suppressed into pliability with years of compression and neglect ready to rush in and make up for the lost decades, her foundations were solidifying, fresh and utterly incapable of handling this meddling. The search was brief; the search was endless. Innate knowledge had made for a poor guide, if a lucky one, eventually taking her by hand to where Something was made Something and Nothing was made Nothing. She witnessed the first, living and complex, build with a craft beyond dexterous, and admiration swelled inside her chest. She witnessed the second, a necrotic wreckage barely twitching, and tears swelled to ductless eyes. Regardless, She despaired, the sight of her hope leaking away making her want to go mad. The only salvation here was a glimpse of greater images. Was it the angle? A revelation? Destiny? No, none of those things existed here, as far as she was concerned. Yet, there it was, between Something and Nothing, a duality, a contradiction, a load bearing pillar of solid metal forged with no regard for the building that would grow around its unending facade, and now the single most important element of the whole. She raged at it, knowing its touch without knowing its meaning, but to dislodge it the slightest amount would mean the crumbling of Her. They led opposite ways, above and below, to the whole and to the broken. Incomplete? Malformed? It didn't matter in the end, she followed the former, a second of walking across an endless kaleidoscope, until she realized she knew this place, quite intimately too. She had come full circle. Did that mean there was nothing for her here? No, it was all her, wasn't it? Everything was Her. There was no wind, there was no gravity and no distance, no matter, only Her. And so, she revealed herself. And the bittersweet answer to her plights was made obvious. She gasped aloud, spine curling into itself as her muscles seized. In the months since her battle against God, her Will had solidified, and though some slight modifications could maybe still be made, anything large scale had become close to impossible. Not without consequences, anyway. She would have to take those, she had to survive. Full of holes and phantom agonies, she began the process of cracking apart and remaking herself, knowing it would be the last time she could and survive. Tendrils of Will flew at her from every direction, engulfing her in seconds. Slippery tips found purchase through the division of her limbs, grasping them in an attempt to drag them back, as if he could prevent what was coming. There was no Nothing there, Glashii's panic made clear. "Are you ██████?!" The garble of words that poured into her burned their way inside then out through myriad weeping wounds, hazy."You would ██████ your own ██████ to escape me?!" Joints divided, arms melded, fingers lengthened and shortened, all loose and out of control. Parts once divided fused together, nerve equivalents knotting into confused bundles. Touch became taste, became smell, became touch again. Her physical body suffered, bleeding and convulsing, moans gurgling with foamy spit. "This goes beyond the mere ██████, it is monstrous! Stop ████ now!" Glashii said, her body pulled up and beaten against another surface, hard and coarse. "You will ███! Worse, ██ ██████!" She seized control of her hands, pushing herself into some semblance of a crawl as the transformations faltered, succeeded, had to be reworked or stopped from continuing. Nothing obey her commands without struggle, and now she was more wound than girl. Glashii provided an unwelcome help, holding her together, willingly or not, while dripping hostilities into her. "█████ this abhorrence! Is ██ all for ███ ████ of ███████ yourself of ███ Blood?! It █████ ████!" Wrong, all wrong, another mistake, her seams pulled apart for stupid reasons. Was this what she wanted to do? She didn't remember, focus the only faculty she had left, her head occupied equally by a paralyzing headache and the sensation of having her skull filled with lint. She tried to reel back, only for her Will to rebel and double down. "...████ have you ████ to ████████?" She pressed through. Controlling Will was only a matter of will, in the end. Will did not bleed. It did not scab nor coagulate, she thought. She had to pull back what she had lost, unfeeling chunks of flesh that was not flesh, and form makeshift curatives out of their crumbling remains. Not close to enough: they barely held her together, and the way their chunks faded they wouldn't last to the next morning. If anything, they were a detriment, a constant sense of itching wrongness that nagged incessantly. At least she had stopped breaking. Arms left serpents of splintered joints, each hand with its own number of poorly forme fingers and sprouting stumps, so many limbs failing to merge with one another they became misshapen unions, but at least she stopped breaking. "Ah... Aaaaah..." she rasped. "...Are you content?" Glashii asked, contempt diluted in poorly controlled waves of fear. "All this to reject the undeniable? You are moments away from death." "Daaaaaaaad. I... I..." "Not the best healers of our kin could undo this level of rampant self destruction. Answer me now! Are you happy?! Could you loath me so much as to—" "I feeeeeel sooooooo goooood! Hehehehe hehehehe hehehehe hehehehe hehehehe hehehehe hehehehe hehehehe hehehehe hehehehe! I can't feel my body at all!" Under the eyes of the animal thing inside her, Glashii jumped away, but she couldn't care less! She felt so odd! Tingly! Even though her body was all gone, from the sores to the broken bones to the agony to the despair! Not really, not logically, but also yes, in every sense of the word gone, washed away by the indescribable suffering and horror of shattering away! Had it always been this easy? She had seen so much! She had understood so little! But she had found and interpreted, and wasn't that all she needed? The way forward had been there all along, muffled under the light, under the roof of the Oke, under endless kilometers of carved stone corridors and intestinal labyrinths, yet always watching, welcoming her, eager for the day she would need their guidance. Dipping into the lake and spreading herself into its cool embrace had felt like coming back to a home she had never lived inside. But a roof you spent years beneath, does it's presence not become invisible? She shouldn't have let the comfort fade. Aaaaah, she had been so horrible! How could she have ignored it for so long?! It greeted her with such delight once, pushing her undesired growth forwards knowing she would resist it, but also knowing she would die without their kind hands. How could she! It had waited all along! "My Mariwa!" her father called her. "We must go. We have to—" Broken legs whipped at his face like a tail, forcing him back. Before he could react, she rose on her arms and dove into the waters. A cold embrace enveloped her, and she wasted no time creaking her bones that where not bones into place, enjoying the security while she still could. Glashii Di Aila pursued. His own Will slithered in her direction, tugging open wounds and wet bandages in its desperation to keep her within his awareness. Soon, he was Nothing again, there and Nowhere at once, impossible to find, now impossible to ignore, soon to charge through their grapple and finish the task by any means necessary. "By force then!" he screamed into their connection. If she insisted in keeping to her old notions, she would for sure lose. He had to have known, right? This place hadn't been chosen only for its beauty. But it had been there all along, and would be there always. Arms vestigial and crude, complex and overbuilt to near uselessness, rose above it all and called for its presence. She let it wash into her and learned. She let its attention wash over her, over the light obscured lake and its flower infested shores, wash over her suddenly frozen father. The next time she grasped for him, he wasn't Nothing anymore; she felt the work at play there, the way his Will worked its own being onto its skin like a fine coating of grease, still too slippery to hold firm yet no longer capable of avoiding her touch. She met her father's wide open eyes through the murk, as if they shared this dance in the most crystalline of waters. "Impossible," was all he managed to say before she crashed against his stomach. Her jaws shut against the bones of his pelvis, tearing through loincloth and muscle alike. He howled, kneeing her in the ribs, claws raking her back, paralleling her ribs, and not a thing did she feel. Her knuckles pummeled at his side, digging holes into the metal of his cuirass until they found flesh. An elbow struck her sharp in the back. For all she could ignore her own pain, the alien sensation of her shoulder blades splintering was enough to make her let go, the strength behind the blow doing the rest to push her away. Her father fled her, not fast enough; seven paces away and she had already encircled him. He hid himself again, but that trick was worthless now. She sunk to the silt and dashed for his legs as he turned to flank her. Too late did he realize she didn't need to shed light over everything to find him, for all she could see him he could see her, too slow to dodge as her teeth crunched the shell over his shin like wet paper. She should have tasted blood then, but even that was lost to her. What wasn't lost, was reflex; she twister her body in time for a slicing kick to only scrape her arm, the sheer strength of her bite finally cutting all the way to the bone, sliding off with a mouthful of flesh she spat off to continue her attack. "The flesh of your own lineage...!" Glashii was the one to retract this time, escaping the territory of her Will. She would have been left blind then, if not for something strange: there was something odd in the World of Wills, diminute to the point it was nearly negligible, a presence mixing with the water's own yet of a distinct nature. She felt it all around her, a familiar trail that teased her hunger like blood in the water, following behin. Not a moment later did she brush against Glashii, seizing the tip of a limb. She burst out of the water in his direction, a starved arrow. Arms pushed her aside, too slow. Underwater again, she pulled, mouth open and fingers grippingt tight, already turning to deliver another devastating blow, but unfortunately her strength failed her, claws slicing through the left of her face, slapping her with enough violence to change her direction and cut an eye in half. The vanishing of her peripheral vision nearly distressed her enough to paralyze her. He pressed a hand to the wound, as if she could keep it from falling apart, but it wasn't that bad, if anything it felt shallow under the flesh, so low in Will she could feel it healing already. "Woooooow," she said. "Is this what life felt like to you too? It's amazing! Holly Seneschal could never handle this kind of stuff!" "This makes three," Glashii said. "Thrice you made an attempt at your father's life. Could you really be trying to profane such a holy concept for the sake of such unforgivable sins?" "I don't get it?" "What I mean, My Mariwa, is that you breached a taboo. That you have reached the point of no return, that you dared deface the Blood and your history beyond our forgiveness." he said, so affectless it was chilling. "And that you left me a most unpleasant duty." "I see!" The feeling was clear enough. She jumped into action. She met her father face to face, teeth gnashing and claws extended. She expected him to flee, and instead was left reeling as his forehead crushed hers, staggering her back for just long enough a hand clamped around her face from below, sickles piercing as deep her facial muscles and completely restraining her mouth. She punched, but at too bad an angle to cause any significant damage. Retaliation came swift, slicing through her stomach, and even through the numbing haze she knew she had been spilled open. She swiped at her father, a quick elbow pushing her arm aside. Will limbs frenzied, she no longer tried to hold on to Glashii but to tear him apart, gouge him to shreds, thousands of pinching fingers raining at him as she pushed away, uncaring for the painful path torn down her jaw as she escaped and planned her next— She crashed. Oh. His blows always held Will, didn't they? That cut hadn't been only to her physical belly. He had hidden the damage. What an interesting trick! She still couldn't feel it. She gasped, water entering her throat as her muscles went limp and her senses fell into disarray, veiling the physical world with a pleasant dream-like fog that lulled her Will into a peaceful restfulness. She wanted to reject that peace but it was too heavy, too strong. She enjoyed the way her body rocked with the water's turbulence. It took a few seconds to finally settle as her body drifted to the bottom of the shallow lake and laid among old mud and frightened crustaceans who fled to their burrows, only now coming out as the battle came to a stop. She could sense them, but not turn to greet, apologize maybe for all the chaos she had brought to their house. Ignorant of that peace, an arm dragged her back to open air. The apparitions had gone silent, breaths held still for the loser to be revealed and left behind for the feast. The shore's flowers had been ravaged and scattered across the lake, surface settling back into mirror stillness. And finally, pondering her from above, was Glashii Di Aila. "This rescue has been a catastrophe. I was too late, my Mariwa. No esteem by the Blood would have you accepted into the Land of the Brave Sailors." Distant, she wondered if the way he held her by the shoulder should be uncomfortable. "What you have done, nearly or under witness, defiles the Blood. If only I had know sooner, I could have taught you properly, your duties and the ancient laws. They protect our people from those who came close to crushing us! But you are beyond our means. The very structure of your being is warped to the basest traits, to think holy Blood could be disgraced into mingling with the Madhounds." The hand might have squeezed. It might not. She should be overcome with bitterness, dying here despite how hard she fought. She should want to go out like Elder Seneschal, defiance in her eyes and flames on her tongue. Yet that desire never came. There was peace in this too. Glashii mumbled under his breath, or maybe he cried out loud, it didn't make a difference as the touch of his Will softened. "This is unpleasant. No father should—- Doesn't matter, duty remains duty, so it is. "Rest in grand profundity, my most gorgeous Mariwa. May our ancestors make you as pure as the living could not. May your sins not bar your last journey. And may you forgive me for my inaction." Of all the nonsense she heard today. She tried to scoff; air whistled pitifully through a shut throat. Pure! As if he knew what that meant! As if it wasn't his fault she was impure. If only she could get angry. Or, perhaps it was for the better that she didn't. her consciousness drifted, waiting for the blow of grace. It never came. Maybe it was indecision. Maybe it was cruelty. Her eyes closed. Little by little, she lost herself, as if falling asleep. The children laughed in mockery. Like waking up to your body eaten by flames. Electric, frantic dread that pierced through the veil of death to reignite her body so she could run. Repulsive and malicious, an oily film that drained the air of every sweet vestige and clung like soot. She trashed in vain. Couldn't her father hear it? Didn't he notice that she need to get away or die faster?! She tried to beg, to slap him, to put all the strength returned to her body on a final stand of Will. Nothing worked. She whimpered. "████ ██ the matter ████ you? What ██ █████████ my ██████?!" Her peaceful end shattered as a great crescendo broke from the Apparitions, the ghosts fleeing in tangible mass dread, the press of bodies shoving and joining one to another to get away faster, some threading into the lake as if the both of them didn't exist anymore. It crashed into the waters with the crack of world ripped asunder, its many voices adding to the choir and twisting their melody. Glashii screamed as it touched the lake, two waterfalls parting to the sides in animal fright and pain. She knew the fear well. Explosions of mud and dirt announced its arrival, the weight meaningless in holding back such destructive force. In that last moment, Glashii Di Aila let go of her, turning to escape In that last moment, she saw Agare soar, Hagan firmly in hands. It dove in an arc, and time slowed to a crawl. Glashii Di Aila's decapitation was swift She hit the ground, and the lake rushed back to hide her. A rapidly decaying Will touched hers. "██ ██████, run!" And with that, the Di Aila family came to an end. And with that, everything went dark.