"Reiden, Katriel! Watch for her head: her scream can stun you, even make you faint!"

Right when Tristessa's finished shouting that warning, the Dullahan pushed Katriel back with a kick and countered an attack from Reiden with inhuman strength, forcing him to take several steps back as his sword recoiled. She raised her head, showing it to the two men, and let out a horrifying shriek, spreading Terror and Madness in the minds of those present. An eerie sound that Tristessa felt tearing at her eardrums, making blood and sanity alike want to escape from the inside of her skull.

If both men hadn't stepped back, they might have been knocked out, or worse...

"You waited until now to say that?!" Katriel complained, glancing at her with anger. "What other secret do you have about this shrieking missus?!"

"She can move very fast by shifting into shadows!" she warned, quickly pointing at the Dullahan so they could see her advancing toward them once she lowered her head. "LOOK OUT!"

Reiden parried the dark knightess' curved saber as it descended vertically over him, the echo of the metal-on-metal clash resonating in the clearing. Katriel tried to take advantage of the opportunity to plunge his knives into her severed head, perhaps managing to penetrate the armor or, with some luck, stab her through the visor. But the Dullahan protected her weak spot and counterattacked by kneeing him in the lower part of the abdomen.

"S-sweet Xiliarra, my goddess…" Tristessa heard Fio wail, almost standing beside her, as he lowered the bloody hands he'd used to cover his ears. "Are we going to die…?"

"No, idiot! Pull yourself together!" Ludvig came to his side, accompanied by Bennett, and shook him lightly by the shoulders to bring him back to his senses. "Let's support Katriel, come on! That headless bitch can't hold a candle to five of us!"

"Y-yes… yes, you're right, Lud!" Fio nodded in a frantic way and gripped his dagger with renewed confidence. "Let's go!"

The bandits attacked, driven by their faith in their leader. Ludvig lunged at the Dullahan to protect Katriel, plunging his dagger into her unprotected elbow joint, causing the knightess to let out a moan of pain. Fio and Bennett also contributed, edging around her and stabbing into the spaces her armor couldn't cover.

The Dullahan was being overwhelmed by numeral values. And Reiden, swinging his sword mercilessly at her and thus forcing her to focus her defensive efforts on him, forced their foe to become one with the shadows, towering above them.

"Ha! What a coward…" Katriel muttered, giggling and running his tongue over the blade of the dagger with which he managed to cut the exposed part of the knightess' right knee. "Ugh! Damn, that's disgusting! It's worse than all that Discord surrounding the girl."

"Don't underestimate her…" Tristessa warned, anxiously following the cloud of darkness. The Dullahan's black steed appeared from the shadows, its red eyes shining like two blood jewels, leading its rider around the clearing. "She'll do something unpredictable. She always does… Everything always ends in the worst possible way if you're not careful…"

"And how do you know so much about that thing?" Ludvig asked, pointing with his dagger at the flying shadow. "Why is it chasing you two?"

Before Tristessa could think of any lies to tell, she saw the Dullahan extend her arm to point her head toward the center of the clearing. In addition to expelling Discord in large quantities, dense and drawn into the material plane, she was accumulating magical energy voraciously, like a black hole devouring everything that comes near its horizon.

A sign of a dark spell about to be cast.

"REIDEN!"

Tristessa followed her instincts, guided by past experiences that foretold imminent disaster. She didn't even think about it when she threw herself at the surprised mercenary to save him from an unknown danger.

"Longinos Cruxis."

Both fell outside the spiral of cursed glyphs that the Dullahan conjured, enclosing the entire camp, including the bandits. As geometric lines and logic appeared within the circle, Katriel and Ludvig were quick enough to jump out, but Bennett and Fio weren't.

"W-what...?"

"...No!"

The chance of escape was lost. The dark glyphs collapsed, generating a loud noise like twisting metal in reverberating and far-away echoes, as if coming from the depths of that abyss of darkness that spread within the ring. And from all that blackness rose a palisade of spears. Dozens of them, shadowy, ethereal, and beautifully ornamented with circular patterns of serpentine draconic creatures eating their own tails.

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"AHHHGHH!"

Bennett and Fio were impaled. Their bodies lifted into the air by those many dark spears, without physical substance and causing no apparent damage. Not a drop of blood shed on the material plane, while on the spiritual plane… Their souls had just been shattered.

Silent by the shock, the survivors watched the entire field of spears disappear once the spell ended. Their gazed followed the bodies of the two bandits as they fell to the rocky ground; both on their backs, their eyes the only visible part of their hooded faces staring up into the air, empty and lifeless.

"No way, no!" Ludvig shouted, afraid to take a step toward his fallen friends.

"Damn it… Fuck!" Katriel didn't even have time to accept that his comrades in crime were dead, forced to raise his guard as the flying shadow the Dullahan inhabited plummeted from the heights toward them. "Here it comes!"

"Just a little more…a little more…" the mercenary leader murmured under his breath, his deep breathing and pained gaze letting her know that he still felt spiritual fatigue. His Divinity wasn't ready yet. "Step aside, Tristessa!"

The Dullahan appeared from that amalgam of shadows, her horse vanishing, allowing her to fall between the three men and ready to finish them off. Her ability to defend herself against Reiden's slashes and dodge the swift attacks of both bandits was surprising. Tristessa watched her move with speed and intelligence, aware that they were all seeking to damage her head, and that she could exploit that obvious intention.

"Huff, gaah!"

Reiden deflected the Dullahan's sword with his parrying dagger and lashed out once more, another attack with his bastard sword that sought to break through her defense. The blow managed to overcome the dark knightess' resistance, and the blade sank into her right shoulder, breaking part of the pauldron and causing blood made of shadows to spurt out.

"Now, we can…!" Ludvig saw the opportunity and wanted to seize it, but the Dullahan was two moves ahead on that chessboard. "Ah…?!"

Having sacrificed the use of her sword, she forcefully grabbed Reiden by the neck and threw him at Katriel, as if he weighed no more than a feather. Both men collapsed towards the ground, and no one was able to prevent the Dullahan from bringing her head down on the surprised bandit, being almost face to face with him.

"Maledict Infeya."

A new dark thaumaturgy spell, cast directly at Ludvig. It generated a glyph of darkness on his forehead, which, when activated, spread a network of spider veins across his head, and then the rest of his body.

"…"

Silently, Ludvig brought the dagger to the center of his chest and, before anyone could shout for him to stop, he plunged the tip of the blade deep inside. Reaching his heart, ensuring that the metal did irreparable damage to his arteries and ventricles.

"The pawns have fallen, my Nemesis. Now only your rooks remain... And they shall fall as well. Until you are the only piece remaining on your side of the board," the Dullahan warned Tristessa, speaking for the first time since the fight began. "This is what you get for playing chess with the Abyss. It is not enough to defeat me."

Horrified, Tristessa watched the bandit fall to his knees and then to his side. His death came swiftly, given the systematic failure of his heart and all the blood that began to leak from the sides of the wound.

"How many more will have to die until you accept your destiny? Even a mountain of corpses won't prevent me from reaching you… One of us will die at the hands of the other. As my [Divine Mothers] decreed."

The mere mention of Endrel and Margules filled Tristessa with frustration. Imagining them in the In-Between, both of them pulling at the [Golden Chains] while locked in a lustful embrace of love. Mocking and laughing at the terrible fate they had cast upon Tristessa when they allowed her to pass through that gateway, into her first resurrection.

"No one else will die… Did you hear me, Dullahan?!" she yelled at the headless knightess, unleashing what she felt in a wave of unparalleled courage within her. Overcoming fear and driven by the pursuit of the truth. "No one else will die in this loop, only you!"

Whether the Dullahan had understood the message, Tristessa didn't know. She was only certain she had received it; a feeling that came from the connection they shared, ever since the Baptism in Ruins had reached its critical mass-point.

"Hey you, Fireclaw. While your crazy friend keeps talking to herself... Let's kill this headless bitch, shall we?" Katriel was a bloodthirsty demon, his gaze abounding with incalculable cold, visible thanks to the last slivers of fire that emerged from that bonfire about to go out. "Only then will we free that damn barrier, and I can use her fucking head as a toilet in gratitude for using my gang to practice her thaumaturgy."

The mercenary didn't reply, but he did glance quickly at Tristessa, communicating without words that his intention was to escape this deadly trap, not to eliminate this threat that had already killed four men.

"I agree, Reiden… There's no way we can win, only survive," she thought, watching him and Katriel attack the Dullahan together again. The campfire was about to go out, plunging the clearing into the deepest darkness, from which no one would be able to escape if help didn't arrive soon. They needed more time. "I'll help you, no matter what."

That train of thought led her to turn her attention to the bandits' corpses. Empty vessels eager to harbor a flame of life once again. Even a false one, unaware of the cruel reality they would return to.

"What's dead stays dead. Even if I force them to return."

Her [Divinity of Accursed Existence] focused on Ludvig, the most skilled of the four in the art of combat, and Tristessa pulled on the metaphysical light-switch cord within him.

"Arise."

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