"By the Gods, that was close! I didn't expect Silverthorn to be working at this hour, much less on check in and out duty!"

Severus had slid the small door connecting the semi-open driver's cab to the interior of the coach and stared at the two passengers with a relaxed smile, before continuing to guide the vilecross down the dirt road, without closing the door so they could chat.

"It was a rather unpleasant and risky surprise," added Auron, who, to pass the time, had unholstered one of his revolvers and was checking the condition of the rotating cylinder and the bullets inside. He glanced at Tristessa, and judging by the position of his cheekbones, he was obviously smiling. "Luckily, she seemed to have a soft spot for Miss Irandell here. I didn't expect that: to be honest, I thought she was going to try to beat her up again."

That comment made the young woman grimace in a bittersweet way, merging the sensation of those lips against her hand with the abysmal pain of her head being slammed against the stone wall of that underground passage.

She looked out the window, recognizing much of those sporadic forests that stretched out in both directions. Among some of those thousands of trees was the swarm of palkuriae that indirectly saved her from being killed by the mercenary Melian. She hoped at some point to see trees burned or toppled by ice impacts, traces of evidence of hostile thaumaturgy that by some miracle didn't end up killing her.

To avoid thinking about Astoria Silverthorn and the emptiness she felt in her chest, Tristessa sought distraction by focusing on her Divinities, more specifically the one that allowed her to collect the echoes of the dead.

"Perhaps I can feel the echoes of Melian on the road… Or further ahead, the echoes of the mercenaries. Of Reiden, of Madame Luchie," she thought. "Perhaps by keeping a part of them inside me I can atone for some of the guilt for having brought them ruin…"

They would soon reach the Derelict Outpost; the speed of the stagecoach would ensure that. The premise of a quick return was more than welcome, but she was worried about the state of the place. The looted riches, and the bodies of the dead desecrated by more bandits than just the Ghost Daggers, or any wild creature attracted by the smell of the dead.

At the very least, she wanted to make sure she gave them a proper burial…

"I thought she was going to arrest us," The blood elf spoke so loudly that even his voice carried over the sound of the stagecoach wheels against the uneven ground and the grunts of the vilecross. "Did she say anything to you? I couldn't hear anything about what happened in there."

"She didn't say anything at all. She just had her romantic moment with Tristessa and then left. Isn't that right, lady?" Auron mocked her, not with any ill intentions, but to lift her spirits a little. "Come on, just think, after we've killed all those damn witches, we'll return to the city and you'll be reunited with her. That is, if you think you can forgive her after what she did to you…"

Tristessa sighed. Apparently, she wasn't going to be able to get away from the subject.

"If you were me, Auron, would you forgive her?"

A solid question. While she would prefer to put an end to the matter of the silver-haired knightess, deep down she wanted to know that answer. To calm some of the conflict in her heart, between what she suspected was love at first sight and hatred toward that violent, drunken person she had seen in the privacy of the sewers.

"…"

Silence. Tristessa raised an eyebrow, thinking that perhaps the man hadn't heard her, until he answered.

"No. What's done is done." There was a surge of aversion. Hatred, even, permeated his voice, making the girl's blood run cold. "If you get to know her more deeply, then with the passage of time you'll discover whether she's truly a good person or not. But regardless, you'll always remember that woman disfigured your face. That she fractured your skull, nearly blinded you in one eye, and left you to your fate in a damn sewer, as if you were no less than shit."

Memories that had been seared white-hot into Tristessa's mind; all that suffering, both physical and psychological, ingrained in her being forever.

"Those sins, from my point of view, are unforgivable. Love, seduction, or lust do not justify violence and cruelty. Take it or leave it, lady, it's your life. But I wouldn't speak to that woman ever again."

Tristessa pursed her lips, unable to define how she felt about it. Everything Auron said made absolute sense, and a part of her, the wound Astoria had left in her soul, emanated venom and resentment.

But another part… She seemed to want love and nothing else. A senseless part of her, bound to hope and dreams that even the most nihilistic would spit out due to the absurdity of the human heart.

A heart that she was forced to re-discover on her own, if her lost memories never found their way home again.

"I think that…" Tristessa turned her head to share her opinion with the gunslinger, but looking from a panoramic perspective, she saw something strange on the other side of the window, behind Auron's head. Something that shouldn't be there. "…huh? What the hell…?"

It was a hooded person, their face covered by a white porcelain mask with the shape of a human face. It had its mouth sealed, nostrils too, but not the eyes, which were two vortices of absolute darkness that didn't allow light to pass through.

And from that impenetrable darkness, they were looking into the interior of the stagecoach.

"AURON!"

Tristessa's scream wasn't enough for the gunslinger to react in time and move away from the window. There wasn't even time to get up from their seat.

The upper structure of the stagecoach exploded in a storm of glass shards, wood splinters, and the supernatural force normally associated with the application of offensive thaumaturgy. Hundreds of simultaneous sounds, the rumble of an earthquake, and the violent shaking of the lower part of the transport, which by sheer luck remained intact.

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All of this caused Tristessa to lose control of her senses.

The explosion had thrown her to the ground. In the midst of all that violent movement, she had hit not only her recently healed head, but her lower back and right knee were sending constant pulses of fresh, raw pain into her brain. She had been partially buried by the Mercer-Archeos' clothing and pieces of wood that hadn't been sent flying into the woods.

"...alright?! Can you hear me?!" She could distinguish the blood elf's voice amid the monotonous, constant sound that filled her saturated and dazed ears. "Tristessa! Auron!"

"Severus!" Coughing and grunting in pain, Auron freed the girl from the mountain of clothing and broken wood. With a quick glance, the gunslinger sighed in relief to see that there were no serious injuries and took her by the arms to lift her up. "We're both fine!"

"Thank the Gods!" cried the elf, his back now visible as the wall no longer separated them. He didn't appear to be hurt, but his hair was full of splinters, and his shirt was torn with several cuts. Even the red-furred Vilecross could be seen struggling at her chains and grunting with much more difficulty and exhaustion than before. "The protective glyphs worked, otherwise we'd all be charred to a crisp!"

Indeed, the remnants of magical energy could be felt in the air, the product of both defensive and hostile thaumaturgy clashes. Tristessa gritted her teeth to withstand the pangs of pain and the weight of the magical remnant, which she could neither defend nor resist.

"A-Auron…" She tried to call out to the gunslinger, but Severus's screams and the sound of the coach's wheels moving dominated all the other noises, now that the roof was gone and the walls had been ripped in half. The wind was like knives against the skin of her face; it made her eyes tear and carried her voice far away.

"Calm down, darling, calm down… Be careful, Auron! I don't know who they are, but they hit Milla with a poisoned dagger! I don't know how much longer she can keep the carriage moving!"

"Lady… Shit, duck!"

Auron forced Tristessa's head down, just in time as a curved blade whizzed past at high speed, luckily too wide to hit Severus or Milla. Auron had already drawn one of his revolvers and, amid the shower of splinters and dust, began firing.

Hollow-point bullets flew northward, in direction of Entrana. From the swearing of the man whose hat was lying on the ground, she assumed they missed their target.

"Severus, they're [Wraiths]!" Tristessa heard the gunslinger scream as he covered himself with the lower remnants of the wall and prevented her from moving with his other arm. "There are six of them!"

"What?! Did you say wraiths?!" The blood elf had to look over her shoulder to confirm, with utter panic on his face, that what Auron had said was true. "What in the Abyss are [Imperial Assassins] doing here, and why do they want to kill us?!"

"Do I look like I'm holding the answers?! You focus on driving; I'll take care of them!"

The mention of assassins made the gray-eyed young woman relive all that immeasurable terror she thought she'd left behind in the city, in that sewer system when they escaped from the Dullahan. She wasn't so naive as to believe that the risk of danger out there was nonexistent, especially knowing that the day of the confrontation with the Coven was approaching. But once the risk of losing one life arrived...

There was no way to avoid feeling terror contaminating her soul, multiplying the concentration of Discord that she naturally emanates. Terror she couldn't overcome once it arrived. The fear of the unknown, of Death.

That fear made Tristessa raise her head and look toward the road. Amidst the cloud of dust raised by the wheels, six hooded figures appeared, riding those black-furred beasts with severed horns and jaws full of yellow, salivating teeth. They ran on all fours and were smaller versions of the vilecrosses, called aracrosses.

The hooded figures wore those disturbing white masks with human features. What Tristessa could now see was that these masks had drawings on some parts of their structure, drawn in black ink, such as a web of thorns, birds, flowers... Wild beasts, skulls, demons.

So much symbolism, difficult to understand in a situation like this, where those six individuals, men and women, sought to kill her and her two companions.

"What are you doing?! Keep your head down!" Auron shouted at her, then stood beside her and pointed his two revolvers at the assassins. "Now!"

But Tristessa couldn't obey. Her mind wasn't working. She was so scared and confused that logic and reasoning had gone out the window that had been blown to smithereens.

"Why…why? Why?" she asked, in shock, a small line of blood beginning to run from a cut on her head. "Why do they want to kill us? Why?!"

"Shut up and take cover, idiot!"

In the midst of movement and the turbulence and jolts of the stagecoach, Auron fired. Two bullets managed to hit both aracross and rider, inertia doing the rest of the work and leaving them well behind inside a cloud of dust. The other projectiles failed to meet their targets, as the assassins scattered, breaking formation and going in between on the sides of the road to find cover.

Only one wraith remained on the road to point his wand at the stagecoach. He conjured several fire-elemental thaumaturgy glyphs, ready to manifest incandescent fireballs.

"Severus! The thaumaturge!" the gunslinger shouted.

"Sweet Kantrus, I need a new cane!" The blood elf raised a stone wand with a crudely set crystal at its end, glowing phosphorescent yellow. He pointed it forward and shouted, his voice imbued with magical energy. "Terrum!"

Far ahead, a ring of glyphs the same color as the crystal appeared. The moment the stagecoach passed over it, a wall of earth and stone rose up in the middle of the road. It not only protected the coach from the enemy's fireballs but also forced the assassin's aracross to a sudden stop to avoid the barrier.

But Severus didn't stop there: standing in his seat, he pointed his wand at the wall with rage in his eyes and bellowed another spell:

"Aor Terrum!"

The earthen wall, slightly charred by the fire, was surrounded by new glyphs that in an instant made its surface explode into dozens of projectiles. All of which must have undoubtedly turned the wraith and its mount into minced meat.

To cover Severus's display of thaumaturgy, Auron aimed his pistols at both sides of the road and fired at the assassins. At least two of them, in their eagerness to dodge the bullets, failed to guide their beasts properly and ended up colliding with the trees.

"Out of ammo!"

"Understood! Come on, Milla, my pretty girl, you can do it!"

The Vilecross let out a monstrous roar, and the coach gained a sudden burst of speed that sent Tristessa tumbling to her knees behind the partial protection of the remaining walls. While trying to avoid hitting her forehead against the floor, her hands found the gunslinger's hat, its leather surface warm and hard.

"Are you all right, lady?" Auron asked, taking the opportunity to pull two speedloaders from inside his jacket and use them to fill the cylinders of his revolvers. "Ah, my hat. Thank you. Now stay down and don't do anything stupid."

"Y-yes..." Tristessa saw a smile form behind his sweaty headscarf as he adjusted his hat on his head, as if feeling the contact brought back good memories to him. "A-Auron, I..."

"NO!"

Those few seconds of peace didn't last, before the gunslinger's scream and his serene, light-brown eyes, which filled with surprise. With a kick to the chest, he pushed Tristessa away just as one of the assassins leaped from her aracross and fell upon them. The poison-laced knife aimed for her continued on, sinking below Auron's right shoulder, at the level of his collarbone.

Auron's agonized sigh reached Tristessa's ears. A sigh that opened the door to impending Death.

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