Ale flowed from the barrels and tankards clashed as the Duke’s men carried on with their celebrations. Red in face, the soldiers sang rude songs and laughed along. It was all they could do to cope with the last day’s events. While a crude expression of joy, it was an honest part of soldiers’ life and a way of honoring the memory of the friends they had lost.

Victorian was growing sicker by the minute. He clutched at his stomach as the cramps worsened. Had he eaten earlier, he might have already puked. Such was the toll on his mortal mind and body as the harsh realization of his new master’s cruelty had taken hold.

The thought of what was about to happen next was not something that Victorian had not pondered before. But the truth still was hard to bear. Either the Devil was negotiating his handover to the Duke – a death penalty for Victorian – or all of the soldiers in the room with him were damned to die at her whim. And he knew that there was nothing he could do to stop either scenario from unfolding.

Now only the question of who would die remained.

Maybe I should have refused her? he wondered. This is my fault, after all. The necromancer was right.

The question of who was to live and die was answered when Victorian noticed a skinny man dressed in the clothes of a servant approaching the table from the main entrance. He recognized the man, but was slow to react. He did notice that the servant was holing one hand behind his back and a flintlock pistol in the other. The man carried the weapon low at his side in a manner that almost concealed it in plain sight.

Victorian wanted to act, but was stopped by Leonora as she took hold of his hand.

Confused, Victorian turned to Leonora only to catch a glimpse of her right hand as she drove her fist into his chest, just above his belly. From her appearance alone she hand no right to hit as hard as she did, but the Devil’s handmaiden delivered a strike so heavy that it punched the breath out of Victorian.

Having gotten himself within a short distance of the guests, Kaleb pulled out a black glass orb from behind his back and threw it at the table.

The glass vessel shattered as it struck the wooden frame. The area around the table grew completely silent. Magic took hold. A power of the Void was invoked. There was a touch of cold on everyone’s skin.

Dizzy from the strike and unable to breathe under the effects of the magic explosion, Victorian jumped to his feet. In his haste Victorian hit his legs against the edge of the bench, but all that he heard was the low thud of the impact as it resonated through his own body. He sent a fair few bits of cutlery scattering cross the table, but none of it seemed to make any noise at all. Any sound outside of his body’s internal workings had been snuffed out by whatever magic the orb had contained.

Victorian struggled to draw a breath, but found the room pulling back on him. The moisture on his tongue evaporated and it was at this point that the paladin realized the nature of the attack.

It was a Void bomb that Kaleb had thrown. In its wake a field of localized vacuum had formed around the table, as was shown by the rapidly rising bubbles in the cups of wine before Victorian. In an instant the drinks had been brought to a boiling point without even the slightest change in room temperature.

Invoking a tear in the Void was one of the most effective ways of restraining mages, as it prevented them from casting spells through the sheer power of leaving them breathless. The most common way of controlling ones magic was by teaching the body to combine a phrase and an action to invoke an arcane reaction. The act of hindering the mage’s ability to speak countered half of the combination.

The act of combining a gesture and a spoken phrase was enforced during the learning process as to avoid using magic unintentionally. Only fools and renegades practiced magic without some form of safety. Both were a danger to others and themselves.

She saved me, Victorian thought as he eyed the handmaiden at his side. His chest still hurt – her strike might have broken a rib – but had Victorian held in his breath when the Void was summoned, he would have been far worse off.

The potent magic concoction that the orb had contained formed an area entirely devoid of air. While it was mainly intended to render a mage incapable of casting magic, the vacuum had a secondary and a far more harmful effect on the victim. If Victorian had been holding in his breath, the sudden onset of vacuum would have devastated his lungs. With the quick and powerful expansion of air the organ would have been ravaged.

Having freed himself from the table, Victorian turned around to face the room. He desperately tried to make sense of his situation while struggling with the effects of vacuum. His senses began to falter and fade.

More of the Duke’s soldiers flooded into the room through the main door. Dressed in heavy steel mail and carrying swords, shields and crossbows, the soldiers seemed to make no sound as they fell in around the guests in the middle of the room. Given their anxious, but otherwise natural expressions, Victorian guessed that the bubble of vacuum did not reach out too far from his table.

The other men that had been taking part in the feast just a moment ago now pulled out daggers and short swords that had been carefully concealed beneath their tables. Though clearly drunk, they joined in with their comrades, ready to slaughter their guests at the first sign of resistance.

Only the militiamen seemed to have been taken by complete surprise. The poor citizen-soldiers had not expected such a sudden turn of events and showed a fair bit of hesitation as the Duke’s soldiers moved in to try and push them back into the corners of the room – most likely for their own protection.

With his vision fading, Victorian backed away from the table amidst the silent scene and drew his sword. The young paladin convulsed in pain as a crossbow bolt buried itself into his right shoulder. The impact sent Victorian staggering backwards and he fell down upon his seat.

Just as he landed, the effects of the Void finally lifted and sound returned to the room.

The Duke’s men jumped at the opportunity and moved in closers to surround the guests. One of the soldiers, a red face man who had been taking part in the feast just a moment prior, placed his sword at Victorian’s exposed neck, just below the rim of his helmet.

With his life threatened, Victorian let go of his sword and slowly raised his hands and yielded to the man.

In just a few seconds the entire room had been flooded by the Duke’s soldiers. Over a dozen crossbowmen had taken up positions in the two galleries overlooking the great hall of the keep, ready to fire down at anyone foolish enough to try and make a move.

Victorian and the handmaidens found themselves surrounded on all sides by no less than sixty of the Duke’s men. Having witnessed the power of Diana’s party on the field of battle, they remained at a sword’s reach, uneasily eying their so far compliant foes.

“Don’t resist and you will live,” Kaleb told the handmaidens as he backed away from the table with his flintlock pistol pointed towards them.

Even as the soldiers moved in closer to restrain the guests, the handmaidens did not react.

With his men having gotten within striking distance of the guests, the rogue turned around and hurried for the exit.

“Take care of things here, Captain. I will get the Red Bitch,” Kaleb said and dashed out of the room.

With the rogue gone, one of the Duke’s soldiers stepped forward and took charge of the situation. The titular Captain brandished a length of rope in his hands as he approached the women seated by the table.

“I am sorry, ladies,” he apologized before laying down the rope across the end of the table, “But we will have to restrain you. I promise that we won’t harm you.”

None of the handmaidens replied. The twelve women remained staring down at the table before them.

The Captain approached Victorian who was still slouched up against the edge of the table with a sword at his throat.

Suffering through the pain caused by his wound, Victorian tried to negotiate with the Captain.

“Please, listen to me,” he said, “You have to surrender right now, before it is too late for your men–”

“Surrender?” the Captain asked. “Why? We’ve got you right where we want you.

Don’t be a fool and take off that helmet of yours. It’s over. No one needs to die tonight.” He looked to the ranks of his soldiers surrounding the table, “There has been too much death lately as it is.”

“I beg of you,” Victorian pleaded. “You have to believe me – this is not going to end well for you.”

The Captain furrowed his brows in apparent confusion. “I don’t like this any more than you do,” he said, “But orders are orders. Now, don’t make me use force. Let’s just end it here, alright?”

“It would be a shame if you heeded his advice,” Julia said and looked over to the Captain. “I have waited so long for a good fight.”

Having said her piece, Julia looked around the table at her sisters. “Shall we?” she asked.

Leonora drew her hand over the lines that she had previously carved into the table with her dagger. The shallow carvings took on a fiery glow. The handmaiden extended her hands out before her, opened her fingers and immediately clutched them back into fists before pushing herself away from the table and vanishing into a cloud of black smoke.

Several bolts were fired at her, but the magic she had carved into the table turned out to be a ward. To the sound of a distant thunder crack the projectiles were deflected as a dark shadow consumed the area around the table. Flashes of white blended together with pitch black outlines wherever the bolts struck, but none pierced the barrier.

Leonora’s sudden disappearance had come as a complete surprise to Victorian and the Duke’s men alike, who were left searching the room around them. But that confusion only lasted a split second before the horrifying sound of someone violently gasping for air broke the silence.

Four of the soldiers standing below the gallery on the right side of the room had been strung up by glowing white strings of light. The threads of magic had appeared out of nowhere just as the handmaiden had vanished. The soldiers feverishly clutched at their throats in despair, but it was all for naught. The white strings creaked and resonated with a sound much like that of tensed steel. A fellow soldier standing in the gallery above tried to cut them down, but his sword was deflected by the string as it struck leaving a dent in the blade instead. A few more swings followed but the result was the same – the men were slowly choking to death.

Just as the Captain looked back at the rest of the handmaidens in search of an explanation, he witnessed them vanish into black portals of smoke. What followed next was probably something out of his worst nightmares.

You should have listened. Victorian lamented his failure to convince the Captain. It didn’t have to end like this.

Flashes of black smoke popped in and out all across the room as the handmaidens jumped back and forth throughout the great hall of the Rotwald keep, disposing of the Duke’s men one by one. The Captain looked on in horror as his men fell to the ground one after another.

A scuffle broke out just in front of Victorian when a few of the soldiers tried to fend off one of the assassins attacking them. With a sword still pressing hard up against his throat, Victorian was forced to look on helplessly as the lone handmaiden weaved and dodged to counter the combined assault of four soldiers as they slashed and stabbed at her.

The young woman dressed in blue danced around their attacks in a display of cat-like agility, striking out against the soldiers with her daggers whenever an opening presented itself.

And it didn’t take long for her attacks to deliver the expected results. One after another the soldiers were cut up and disarmed as she slid her daggers into the weak points of their armor. The joints in particular were easy to pierce and it showed as she drove her blades into them, repeatedly wounding her targets before she finally finished them off with a single strike to the head or the neck.

Unlike the rest of the handmaidens, this one had stayed around in one spot for more than a few seconds and her ongoing struggle was drawing in more opponents as the Duke’s men desperately tried to fend off the assassins.

Just as it looked like she was finally about to be overwhelmed, the girl fell down to her knees, drawing her daggers around her in a circular motion. As she hit the ground an explosion of arcane energy erupted outwards from the circle that she had drawn, pushing back the soldiers that had gathered around her.

Immediately after the explosion struck, the girl herself disappeared into a cloud of jet black smoke leaving behind three dead men and twice as many wounded.

The eruption of arcane energy left in her wake struck the man threatening Victorian in the back with enough force to tip him forward. As the terrified soldier stumbled towards Victorian he nicked him in the neck with the edge of his sword.

Victorian grabbed hold of the falling man and pushed him into the bench, stunning the soldier as he hit his head against the wood. Daze from the impact, the man turned to clawing his way across the floor and into hiding beneath the table.

Having freed himself, Victorian rose to his feet only to find a sudden sensation of numbness overcoming him. As he placed his hand on his neck he felt something wet on his fingers. Having withdrawn it he realized that his glove was soaked in blood.

The scene of carnage around him begun to turn and shift as the young paladin observed a steady stream of blood flowing down his mail shirt from the opening on his neck. Shivering from the shock caused by the rapid loss of blood, he tried to make sense of his surroundings.

Victorian’s gaze stopped at the four soldiers strung up below the gallery on his side of the room. The poor bastards were still struggling to free themselves, but their faces had turned red and their motions were becoming increasingly sluggish.

Not like this… Victorian thought to himself.

His mind was starting to wonder, but even as he felt the strength leaving his body, Victorian turned around and grabbed hold of the long wooden bench on his side of the table.

As he pulled on the heavy piece of furniture, Victorian’s legs gave in and he fell down to his knees next to his burden. But in spite of his growing weakness he continued to drag the wooden bench towards the choking men.

Meanwhile, the slaughter around him continued.

Julia kicked her latest victim in the back and the soldier fell forward, hitting the ground hard. The impact sent his blood splattering across the stones. She then jumped back to avoid an attack and disappeared into a cloud of black smoke. A short while later she reappeared inside one of the galleries overlooking the great hall.

The Duke’s crossbowmen had been trying in vain to hit one of the Devil’s handmaidens as they jumped around the room, but had so far found the task impossible to accomplish. They feverishly tried to reload their cumbersome weapons in an attempt to aid their comrades down below.

Julia made her way through the gallery on the right side of the room, cutting apart the crossbowmen as she went.

One of them raised his reloaded weapon towards her and fired off a quarrel, but the smiling assassin tipped the crossbow with the point of her dagger just as he pressed on the trigger. The assassin sidestepped the bolt that the weapon discharged and plunged her dagger deep into the soldier’s eye.

The man next to him tried to reach for the sword on his belt, but ended up grabbing hold of his neck instead after the handmaiden had cut it half-way open to the windpipe. His eyes wide form the shock, the soldier leaned on the railing for support before Julia kicked him in the chest and launched herself towards the wall, once more disappearing into a cloud of black smoke.

A pair of bolts whizzed by in quick succession just where she had been standing a moment before and the soldier whose throat she had just cut open tumbled over the edge. The unfortunate bastard landed upon the hard stone floor of the great hall with an audible crunch.

Julia soon appeared on the other side of the hall and set about dealing with the crossbowmen still firing from the other gallery.

By this time the room below had been reduced to just a handful of living men and a whole lot of dead and dying. The floor was running red with their blood.

Victorian pulled on the bench with all of his strength as he dragged it across the room towards the choking men hanging below the gallery. Breathing heavily, he positioned one end of the bench below the feet of the first man he could reach. To his despair he found that the man was hanging just ever so slightly too high for the bench to reach him.

“No,” Victorian hissed through his teeth. “No – no – no!”

He looked up at the helpless soldiers and came to the harrowing realization that all of his effort had been for naught.

Not like this…

In a final attempt at saving at least one of them, Victorian threw his own failing body over the bench in hopes that it would make enough of a difference that the man could find a footing.

Surprisingly, the soldier was able to reach him. Standing on Victorian’s back the man could loosen the noose around his neck just enough to draw a shallow breath. Perched on his toes, the young soldier shook back and forth, fighting for his life as he tried to maintain his balance.

The battle around them was dying down. Having reduced the Duke’s soldiers to a handful of wounded men, the handmaidens now calmly paced around the room, executing them.

“What were you hoping to gain by this?” Leonora asked as she emerged from a cloud of black smoke in front of Victorian.

With his vision fading, the young paladin struggled to raise his head and offer a reply, but found himself too weak to speak. He remained staring at her feet instead as he fought for every breath.

“Did you think this was going to be enough to redeem your soul?” Leonora pointed her dagger at the young soldier struggling for his life above Victorian. “Is this how you plan on paying for your sins – by sparing the lives of other murderers?”

She walked up to them and wiped the blood from her dagger onto the young soldier’s pants. The boy twitched as the blade touched him.

Leonora kneeled down and took Victorian’s head in her hands. “Don’t worry,” she said as she removed his helmet and looked him in the eyes. “There is no place for wicked souls to go after death. There is no purgatory, no hell – only the silence of the Void.

But wouldn’t it be fun if there was a special place for you? Wouldn’t it be justice if you were made to pay in kind for all the suffering that you and your monstrous Templars have caused in this life?”

She leaned in closer and whispered in his ear, “Isn’t that what you have been searching for, Victorian? A penance for yours sins? I think that you know who you are.”

Victorian’s eyes briefly came to life at the mention of the Templars.

“Oh, I know all about you and your order of genocidal maniacs,” Leonora continued, “Of your Black Forests and your sacred rites.”

The corner of Victorian’s mouth twitched, but no words followed.

What was the point? Victorian wondered, What was even the point of it all?

“Don’t worry,” Leonora said and poked at the Duke’s soldier dangling above Victorian. “I will make sure to kill him slowly, just because you tried to save him. I will make sure that he joins you in the afterlife along with the rest of his friends. There you can all think about what was it that you did wrong to end up dead by my hand.

But before that…” She placed her palm over Victorian’s cold sweat covered forehead and closed her eyes. “I am going to remind you of the worst pain that you have ever experienced.

Consider it a parting gift from me.”

Victorian’s eyes rolled back into his head as Leonora entered his mind.

“You have a stronger will than most,” Leonora commended him. “You resisted me well back at the crypt. But not now, not when you are so close to death…

I will find your worst memories and drag them out into the light for you to re-live again and again until you finally die. No relief before death for you, I’m afraid.

The room around them faded into darkness.

A moment later Leonora found herself standing at the end of a long corridor. It was shrouded in shadows, but for the large wooden double door standing closed shut before her.

Leonora extended her hands towards the gateway in a commanding stance, ready to pull it open.

Victorian’s weakened form was strewn across the ground behind her. He reached out to her with a frail hand and spoke in a broken voice, “Don’t… Please, don’t…”

“Oh, but I will,” Leonora replied. “This is the deepest corner of your mind, Victorian – this is where you have been hiding all of your worst nightmares. As a Templar, I am sure that you have many wonderful horrors to share. Let me remind you of some of them.”

“Don’t,” Victorian whispered.

She pulled open the doors and was immediately blown away by the tidal wave of suffering and terror that emerged from beyond.

Specters of dead people – thousands upon thousands of them – rushed out into the hallway, flooding it in a sea of screams, pain filled howls and heart rending cries of sorrow.

Both Victorian and Leonora were pushed beneath the waves of the human sea as it crashed through the hallway.

The handmaiden was beyond surprised by what she had stumbled upon. Her previously smug and condemning expression had been all but replaced by one of dread and horror.

“What it this?” she asked. “What are you?”

Leonora clenched her fists and forced a pillar of stone to rise out from beneath her and lift her up above the tide of the specters of the dead. As she searched for Victorian, Leonora found that the torrent of dead apparitions had already swept him away, leaving her all alone to face the consequences of her folly. The Devil’s handmaiden peered through the gateway that she had just opened and felt her mind going numb from the horrors she witnessed beyond.

Black Forests – the Black Forests of the temple – reached as far as her eyes could see. The blackened crosses sprung up towards the skies in their thousands. Like stalks of grass they spread out across the blood red fields and onwards, into the barren hills beyond – a human corpse bound to every single one of them.

Thousands of them.

Thousands upon thousands, upon thousands of crosses. Heretics, apostates and the impure – bound, nailed and strapped to the wood in the name of the Temple; in the glory of their gods; by the will of the Highfather.

Frozen in terror, Leonora looked on helplessly as the scene drew her deeper into the horrifying world beyond the gate, the world that existed inside of Victorian’s own mind.

The pillar of stone that she stood upon sailed across the ground, crushing the wooden crosses in its path as it drew her further and further into the land of nightmares.

At the edge of the horizon a winged apparition appeared, a red sun rising behind it. It drew closer across the Black Forests that stretched endlessly into all directions, before finally halting in the skies above Leonora.

“What– What is this?” she mumbled to herself in disbelief.

The winged apparition was an angel the size of a giant. It radiated a blood red aura as it looked down upon the woman dressed in blue. In its hands was a massive vellum tome bound in gold and lavishly adorned with jewels.

It extended that tome towards Leonora in an offering.

“What do you want of me?” she asked.

The angel pushed the tome closer to her.

Leonora reached out for the book with a trembling hand.

The angel grinned at the sight of her eagerness.

Having but touched the tome with her fingertips, she cried out in pain and recoiled from it. Leonora fell down on the ground before the angel, clutching her head in despair. Horror pierced the soul of the merciless killer and she begged for a swift death.

The winged apparition flapped its wings and rose up into the skies. It carried the tome back towards the horizon. The red sun fell from the sky and the Black Forests around Leonora quickly receded into the darkness.

Her nightmare eventually faded and so did the pain. As Leonora came to her senses she found herself kneeling besides Victorian’s body, just below the gallery back at the great hall of the Rotwald keep.

She tore away her hand from Victorian’s head and scrambled away from him in fear.

“Who are you?!” Leonora screamed at Victorian. She held out her dagger towards him with a trembling hand.

“What’s the matter, sister?” Julia asked. The golden haired beauty approached Leonora, brandishing a psychotic smile.

“He is a monster!” Leonora said.

“You saw a monster?” Julia taunted her. “Where? What did he look like?”

“Victorian, he,” Leonora struggled with her breathing, “How?”

She steadied the dagger in her hand and rose to her feet. Having mustered the courage to once more approach Victorian, she raised her weapon for the finishing strike.

“Enough!” the cold, ethereal voice of Lord Boniface rang out across the great hall of the Rotwald keep. “Stand down everyone.”

The handmaidens froze in place and looked over to the main entrance. The butchers work was already done as, aside from the man that Victorian had endeavored to save, none of the Duke’s soldiers still drew breath.

The militiamen hiding in the corners of the room had been spared the slaughter. Some of them sobbed at the sight of the horror that they had just witnessed while others appeared to have broken down completely – they were huddled together with their eyes and ears closed in a fool’s attempt at escaping the sight and sound of the bloodletting that had just unfolded around them.

Leonora lowered her dagger, looked down for one last time at Victorian and sighed in relief.

Victorian had bled out over the wooden bench. The look in the dead man’s eyes was distant and calm.