Atop a mountain, lived the Nay’na Firilliana Leïns clan.

Guardians of Lebe of the last weapon.

The little girl did not speak. Not because she could not, like her grandmother, she-who-had-lost, but because she was grieving. Grieving at the birth of realization that this life was not hers, that it would never be. What she loved would be removed by her clan, by those adults that watched her strangely, by her parents that did not look like her in any way.

Also, the little girl did not speak because she was scared.

What if they noticed that she loved her grandmother? That this old lady that had eyes the same colour as hers, that sometimes passed a hand in her hair as if she was a Byrn pup, was her sole escape?

Would Melody ask her to kill her too?

.

It was a strange day.

Nay loved stories, even if she did not read as many as she had wanted. If she could read her own novel, this moment she would never have believed.

That the young woman with cloudy eyes was waiting voluntarily for the coming of an angel? Unthinkable.

That she would wait in front of this Canyon that haunted her nightmares, for the creature inhabiting them? Impossible.

She was shivering, but not because of the cold. As one more sign that this could only be a bad dream: it was almost warm today. Instead of continuing to pile up, the snow had even decided to melt. Not massively, but enough to transform the cloudy white into a watery glue under her feet.

The Legio looked at the left side of the canyon of Sables. Over there, a few meters away, slightly high up, was a hidden alcove where Trinne was hiding. You needed to know about it to know it was there, and even with that knowledge, it only seemed like a shadow amongst many others.

The red-haired woman was standing ready. She had never sworn as much as when she climbed up there with the Legio’s help, but Nay understood that that lack of decorum was less because of the climb and more in anticipation of what was to come.

As, for once, Trinne had simply acknowledged the Legio’s plan entirely. Then she didn’t acknowledge remotely as much when Nay asked her to wait before finalizing it.

Because, on this strange day, when the Legio had woken up, she had been stricken by a realization, more akin to a certainty.

She could not flee her nightmare. Her father had told her that it wasn’t her demon, that this creature was only that, a creature.

Today, she needed to prove it to herself.

Because it would be today.

She didn’t really know how, as if an imperceptible odour in the air, but the angel was coming.

Trinne hadn’t tried to argue when Nay had announced it, not even trying to understand where such certainty was coming from. After a week of waiting, they were finally putting their plan into action.

Which began with waiting even more.

The Legio was kneeling in the watery snow. The weapons she had chosen to fight were planted in front of the small fire next to her, the flames dancing over her closed eyes. She wanted to fight with no gloves, no barrier between her and the weapons, and she could not let the blades’ pommel freeze her muscles or break her focus due to the pain of the cold steel on her flesh.

At the far reaches of her sixth sense, she could sense her friend, who was like an oasis in this desert of rhythms, this place unwelcoming of any life.

She felt the anguish, mostly, but also the smell of flowers. There were no cogs in her Rreico today.

Finally, the young girl with cloudy eyes stood up and opened her eyes. Slowly, she picked up her two weapons, one in each hand, and kept her eyes focused on the fire.

At the edge of her vision, she could see her arms and hands tremble, and her torso show a breathing getting more and more panicked and hacked. Nay closed her eyes again. This panic was uncontrollable, and as such, she let it overcome her freely, all the terror in her body, she welcomed inside.

I am going to die. Trinne is going to die. It is coming. Slashed and cut. Angel. Lost. Lisana. Devoured. Annihilated. Losing everything. Nothingness. The unknown. I know so little, what if I was wrong?

Her thoughts were broken down in a mist of fear.

But a tornado could only destroy what resisted.

Her body relaxed, her training and experience forcing it to do so. Her heart, a second beating in a frenzy, was now slow and regular. Her arms stopped trembling. And her mind followed suit, soothed.

Nay breathed through the nose.

Exhaled through the mouth.

All her emotions were free to run rampant, all her fear was entirely accepted. An internal typhoon.

And in the eye of the internal storm, stood her resolve.

The master Legio looked afar, towards the dark depths of the scar in the mountain range, to gaze at what the Rreico had announced.

It was unquestionable that the creature was magnificent.

Nothing had changed about it.

At this distance, Nay was unable to determine if the angel advancing towards her was the same that had almost found her, a decade prior.

But she felt like it wasn’t.

Every second that passed, every meter crossed, transformed Nay’s fear into something else.

She was eager.

Because whatever the result of this encounter would be, Nay knew that she would finally be freed of the nightmare that had accompanied her for more than half of her life.

And the Rreico of the monster was clearer and clearer.

Even more evident through her sixth sense was the realization that this creature had no place in this world. If the arachnid-like hands and feet, the underworld-like face, and the height almost reaching three meters were not enough, the Rreico on its own was proof enough.

There were two. One like an internal rhythm, close to an animal, fierce, hungry, that at the sight of Nay had only wanted one thing: to rip her apart, and another, almost entirely different, feeling like a kaleidoscope of horror. It was like a dozen of cold and calculating voices, smart but just as hungry as the bestial rhythm.

This was an abominable mixture of Vestigio’s end and the victims of the Devourer.

The Legio found, even more, disturbing the fact that in the case of the God-Touched that had forsaken all his humanity, it had been deliberate, while here, it was natural. The Legio could not fathom what world could birth this kind of creature.

Nay took a defensive posture. She had no idea if the creature would talk before attacking, as there was very little that she knew, to say the truth.

But, the angel had a Rreico, as monstruous as it was.

And for a master Legio, it would be enough.

Despite that, when the angel stopped in front of her, barely out of reach of her chitinous and obsidian arms, she had to do a superhuman effort not to flee and scream.

It wasn’t the angel she knew, the eyes in front of her were orange, like two beautiful ambers in the middle of a nightmarish face, nothing like the surreal blue that had traumatized her.

But in a way, she was wrong.

“I foooooound youuuuuuuu.” Saif the voice of a little boy.

Nay repressed a shiver of horror.

In the middle of the turmoil of horror inside her, her thought was clear.

“You weren’t the one there. But you were all there, weren’t you? You are always all there.”

The creature angled its head in an almost cute way, to testify to its lack of understanding, then its mouth opened to show off its dagger-like teeth. Nay wanted to scream, but once again, she held herself back.

“You’re just an animal, but you, you all are one. And I know you understand what I’m saying.”

“…I’m going to eat you…Little Firante.” And the angel smiled.

Nay jumped back, just in time to avoid the deadly hand swiping where she had just stood.

The angel had attacked in a manner similar to the Trechuites. It had lowered itself and stepped forward, to reduce the distance separating them in a perfectly executed lunge.

The Legio stepped twice on her left. “You’re very obviously gifted with intelligence. Why not answer me?”

The creature had a weird jerk. Then Nay felt as if the animal Rreico disappeared in quicksand, pushed down by the kaleidoscopic Rreico.

“Prey. You are the last, I, am, eager. Finally free. After. SO MUCH MEAT.”

The next instant, the demonic Rreico released the bestial one, who expressed its return with a sharp scream, like chalk on a blackboard.

“Kkkkkkkkkkiiiiiiiiiiiii.” There was drool on the bony chin of the creature.

Who then stepped towards Nay.

The Legio reacted in a hurry, jumping back in great strides.

Her objective wasn’t to fight the angel. Without the Rreico to warn her, she would already be dead, after all. But she hadn’t come here just to speak to her most troubling dreams incarnate, she had come here to end them.

Contrary to the first attack, the following strikes were much more consistent with the methods of an obsidian monster with giant claws. Its sixteen sword-like fingers were hitting everything in big wide swipes. Her firepit was dust, the ground made into a cloud of dirt, and after Nay passed next to a rock that had to be approximately her size, it transformed into a shrapnel of stone pieces under the monster’s assault.

The Legio was keeping a very safe distance between her and the frenzied beast. She knew its weakness, had witnessed it when the Firantes had been ended.

The creature was clumsy. Its limbs were too sharp, too piercing, incompatible with this world that should never have welcomed them. And as it was coming to transform Nay into cubes of flesh and blood, it was stumbling. Its lower members were entering the ground as if they were scorching hot knives entering butter, but some places were easier than others, and without its ‘arms’ to help itself, the angel was constantly unbalanced.

But it wasn’t as if the Legio could use that weakness, as there was a curtain of deadly claws only waiting for the young woman to enter their area of certain demise.

Nay wasn’t willing to go there.

After all, even if there were two Rreicos, monstruous and only comparable to the most horrible things she had ever been a witness to, those were Rreicos.

Rhythms of life that she had been taught to control during a fight.

If the angel had been a warrior, a master like Archebald Grosstachier, Quar Birrebus, Marke, or Redrick Darkstar, Nay would have been helpless.

But, this wasn’t an opponent. It was a predator.

The Legio continued to fall back, the Angel continued to go forwards.

Until the Legio’s back hit the cliff of the canyon of Sables.

“I found youuuu” The angel said.

Nay prepared.

The angel stepped once more, and at the same time swiped with both monstruous appendages towards the Legio, in a morbid rendition of a hug.

Then the ground on its left crumbled under her spider-like foot. Making the left arm fly way above the master swordswoman.

Its right hand though, and the eight sword-like claws, continued undeterred, straight towards Nay. Nay was ready though. And in a move very similar to the one she used to disarm the Banshee two months prior, she cut off air and angelic flesh. Bubble was a half-circle of impossible to stop cutting.

Four claws fell in the melting snow, bluish bubbling blood fell on the white surface, and the Legio dodged the rest of the attack by crouching and dodging towards her left.

“Kkkkkkkkkiiiiiiiii”

For the first time maybe in the life of the atrocious being, it was afraid.

And Nay was serene.

The creature stepped back, scratching the cliff of the canyon with its intact member. It was a reflex of survival, and at first, it seemed to work.

Because Nay hadn’t stopped there. At the first sign of weakness, her long blade had struck, straight towards what served as an angel’s neck.

But it was too tall, and with it stepping back, the rapier hadn’t reached the chitinous black as night scales.

And without knowing it, the angel had sealed its fate.

Without a single sound, not one sliver of clue of her presence, Trinne fell, Lake in hand. Exactly where the angel stood. The Legio hadn’t signaled her when to act, forcing herself to look away from where the Duchess stood.

The only had one opportunity, and nothing was allowed to give it away.

Trinne hadn’t even used her power, in fear of the angel spotting the use of her phantom miracle, and she had stayed completely passive at Nay fighting for her life.

She had waited.

For one last time, she had hidden in a hole to vanquish an angel.

The red-haired woman’s strike was perfect. Aiming for the creature’s left shoulder. The enchanted blade cut through flesh and bones, barely stopped by the angel despite it being supposedly resistant to magic. Using all the force of its fall, Lake only stopped when it exited back on the right side of the monster’s torso.

Trinne did a combat roll in the snow when she landed, immediately taking as much distance from the beast as possible.

The lower part of the angel’s body stayed planted in the ground, but in a grotesque image, the upper part slid, followed by a burst of unnatural blue blood, and crashed on the ground.

“Trinne!” Nay warned.

“I know.”

The two women didn’t lower their guard, because they felt that despite the obvious killing strike, the creature was not dead.

But it did not move.

Its amber eyes were fixed on Trinne’s.

“You. I ate well in your home. I would have liked to eat you too. I’ll eat you later.” Said the creature with the voice of a little boy. Then its eyes blurred, and the two Rreicos inside vanished simultaneously.

And silence reigned supreme once again in the scar of the Unbroken Ones.

The Legio took a moment to catch her breath until finally, she talked.

“We got it.” Nay could barely believe it.

Then, as if those words had brought that same realization to Trinne, the duchess dropped the sword borrowed from the master Legio and fell on her knees.

“Hani!?” The young woman with cloudy eyes shouted, suddenly terrified. She ran towards her friend. “Is it the blood? Is it toxic? Are you feeling all right?”

Her friend only cried softly.

“I got it. We won.” She could barely be heard.

Nay only took a second before deciding to hug her. “Oh Trinne. Yes. We won. You got it. It’s dead. Was it…was it the one…”

“It was… That was it…I got it.”