If this is to be the last moments of her life, she is definitely enjoying every moment of it.

Her body is moving on its own, evading and counter attacking with ease. There are no doubts with every strike and dodge, her weapons waving around organically, almost becoming a part of her body. In all this chaos, she only sees the armored figure of Avalel before her, shrinking, weakening with every exchange of blows. A figure that’ll soon fall to her blade.

The Gate inside her is long torn apart by the explosion of her fury.

Her core is screaming, the bursts of energy nearly ripping her muscles apart with their intensity. Again, again, again the blade strikes down, each blow knocking Avalel further backwards. Wave after wave her weapons attack, leaving no room for rest. Even if she is outnumbered by his blades, she pays no heed, swatting them away as she focuses on her target. She sees everything clearly now, time coming to almost a standstill from her perspective.

That arrogant tyrant, buckling before her eyes, receiving his long-due judgment is just… satisfying.

She launches herself from the ground, swinging her blade-arm like a claymore, crashing into those ugly eight blades that have now formed a shield. The impact smashes them apart, only for the blades to quickly reform their shapes, just in time to block her second blow. Sparks of energy fly in all directions, her knife swiftly parrying every single stray bit of energy. There will be no pause to her momentum.

She will complete her revenge.

Her legs dash over the crumbling ground, her knife poised to thrust directly at his neck. He dodges with elegance, but only to meet her blade, the edge slicing the air to reach his waist. He parries, leaving his legs open. She slides, her feet raised to the level of his knees. He leaps back, sending the blades at her in a desperate counterattack. She dodges again, closing the gap until she is entangled within his defenses, engaging in a mad dance. A flurry of stabs in quick succession, driving him backwards into awkward ground. The wall of the room is approaching closer, and soon, Avalel will have nowhere to retreat to. She raises her blade before swinging it down on his head. He ducks, quickly counter attacking with a swipe of his blade. But she jumps, narrowly avoiding that desperate swing at her legs. Quickly recovering into another stance, she thrusts her blade, aiming at Avalel’s chest. Yet even in that vulnerable moment, he barely dodges, taking a leap to the side. The blade strikes the ground, breaking the flooring. He stumbles, his legs wobbling as they try to find their footing.

Finally, his guard is open.

She rushes up, her knife once again on the offensive. Concentrating her energy on the blade, the small piece of metal suddenly feels heavy in her hand. Sparks fly as the knife becomes charged, energy crackling around as she struggles to contain it within the strained metal. Each step feels cumbersome, the energy almost all redirected to her weapon, yet she charges on, Avalel’s body open for her taking. In those slow moving moments, she envisions his chest being cleanly stabbed through, the life in him extinguished with a single blow.

Clang! The knife comes into contact with metal, a blast of light shocking both into a momentary pause.

It should be it. It should be.

Yet Avalel is still there. His arms, one of them a crimson blade, block her attack just before his chest armor. He’s shaking, but there’s no letting down. Kavlina feels the energy dissipating from her knife, the momentum now gone.

The attack has failed.

Pathetic.

Right behind her, she hears the hisses of Avalel’s eight blades, speeding towards her back in a desperate counterattack. She quickly turns, dodging and deflecting the nuisances with her blade-arm, slicing them to bits again and again as they reform and resume their attack. There is no second attack. Avalel has already slipped away from her grasp in those precious moments.

Absolutely pathetic.

She engages all eight blades at once, slicing them in half, rendering them immobile for a moment. Without even a moment to catch her breath, she charges again, maintaining the same fervor as her previous attack as she lunges at Avalel, her blade-arm outstretched as she abandons all defense. Her energy reserves are draining, her core is straining, but she will keep up this explosive output, destroying herself in the process.

All to avenge that betrayal years ago, her only memory of the enemy that now opposes her.

Avalel unleashes a storm of energy from his blade-arm, the beams rushing at her like sudden machine gun fire. There is no way to completely dodge or block the wave. She will be punctured, torn, ripped apart. But she reckons her blade will still hit him.

Go faster, you pathetic girl.

A cloud of crystals suddenly envelops her, shielding her from the beams. They vaporize upon contact with the beams, but with every crystal hit, the energy is dispersed. In the end, none even go close to hitting her. Just as fast as she had expected her death to come now, it disappeared. A few crystals graze against her skin, but it doesn’t matter. She breaks through, with Avalel hopelessly attempting to dodge her attack.

Finally, a hit.

She hears the satisfying squelching of flesh as her blade comes into contact with Avalel’s right shoulder. The blade-arm fades away, returning to its original organic, flesh-and-blood state. There is a brief pause, Avalel frozen in shock as he turns to his immobilized arm, Kavlina stunned as she smells the richness of blood.

She removes her blade. Avalel falls back in terror. The gaping wound is exposed.

He screams. Kavlina laughs.

Finally, finally, finally… This is it. THIS IS IT.

She cackles as she immediately resumes her attack, thrashing at Avalel’s broken body. The eight blades are now in permanent defense, protecting him from Kavlina’s frenzied attacks. But it’s futile. Useless. She slashes and stabs with reckless abandon, beating her enemy to the ground with repeated ruthless strikes. The Anapadeia is now back to his hand, but with the entire arm useless, it cannot even offer a strong parry, her knife ending up slicing against his forearm.

THIS IS PERFECT.

She strengthens her limbs, rapidly sheathing her knife before she engages him with fist and foot. A kick, a punch, a sweep, a knee… She still wants to kill him, but not that fast. With every blow, he is knocked back, only for Kavlina to grab him before she delivers her next blow. In her eyes, Avalel is now but a ragdoll, tossed and thrown around for her pleasure as she revels in the sweet taste of revenge. There will be no forgiveness. There will be no mercy. There is only violence.

She has waited for this day for so long. Avalel is beaten at her hands. Tarak avenged. Even as she is now scraping the reserves of her core, she feels a sensation of extreme pleasure as she unleashes blow after blow of her long-repressed anger, all the while roaring with haughty laughter. Finally, with the torture close to completion, she delivers a strong punt to his stomach, sending him rolling before he crashes against a wall.

The cloud of crystals that protected her earlier now envelop Avalel, striking his torso from all sides, piercing him like hundreds of needles. As she turns behind, she sees a bitterly smiling Nasition, the weakened leader of the Confederation that once nominally served as her superior. Blood trickles from his wounds, unable to be stopped. He will likely also fall after this day, but he is smiling, laughing nonetheless.

“Thank you,” she whispers under her breath as she charges into the cloud. The crystals do not part, pricking and scraping her skin and clothes, but she simply ignores them, breaking through and finding Avalel within it, his body heavily battered, struggling to regenerate even the barest of wounds.

She launches a punch to his chest, sending him flying, his ribs cracking under the pressure. There is no resistance left. As much as Avalel wishes to retaliate, he cannot even stand. Finally, she will go for the kill. Brandishing her blade, she approaches him before raising it up to plunge it down towards his head. She has had enough of torturing him, even if he deserves much more. Her energy reserves are depleting, and her Gate will not close.

After she has killed him, she too will die.

The blade cleanly pierces Avalel’s helmet, through his left eye socket, and nailing into his skull, cracking the visor in the process. It is done. Her revenge is complete. The savior of the New Rule is gone. The man she once called her friend is dead. Tarak is likely smiling at her now, glad that the conflict has reached its resolution. Kavlina, the Black Maiden, has killed her final target.

As she swiftly removes the blade, blood immediately gushes out from the wound, pouring out onto the floor. The visor shatters, and the ruined, bloodied face that finally exposes itself to Kavlina… is one of a pale-skinned, brown-haired young man. The face she had forgotten in her memories, but has come back in frightening clarity to her damaged mind.

From some hidden, archived corner of her memories, the face begins to reappear before her. The face of Avalel, the one she once called her friend.

She remembers those moments in the forest with him. Those years where she slowly integrated herself into Avalel and Faresoenn’s life, becoming a part of their family even with her broken past. They had their mock fights, herself always having an upper hand over him, but it was all in good fun. The moments of relative peace when she believed she could eventually have a life of mundane mediocrity in the village. In those days, he almost always carried a carefree smile, fitting of a child who grew up in the peaceful forest.

She remembers his grief after that fateful night, the first sign of his violent nature. She didn’t know how to comfort him, so she just stayed by his side. He was quite strong back then, not even an adult yet leaving the village he had lived his entire life to some distant land in the east. And vowing to protect her from the perilous war… His face was one of resolve, remaining pure and optimistic even after that initial tragedy.

She remembers those days they spent together with Tarak, their dorm an oasis of rest from the horrors of war. Even in those moments, his face remained bright. Although there were days, even months where they separated, every time they reunited he was still the same, seemingly unaffected by the war even as he bore the Anapadeia, the weapon burdening him with so much power. He was her most trusted friend, even more than Tarak who she fought with side by side in nearly every battle. She admired that face of his, persevering through thick and thin.

And he had killed Tarak before her eyes, finally broken from the strains of war and power, transforming to an individual she couldn’t recognize.

But it is still Avalel. Her dearest friend. And she, to avenge Tarak, has killed him.

She had to. Avalel has completely changed. To kill him has become her entire purpose since she took up that prosthetic arm and blade. To now collapse in remorse is to betray herself, to betray Tarak, and all who had fallen to the Anapadeia since Avalel’s change. The tyrant has fallen. The deed is done. She should be happy. Her broken life is complete. She should be satisfied.

But why is there an increasingly heavy burden inside herself?

She looks into Avalel’s closed eyes, his left already crushed under her blade and drowned in his own blood. He is definitely dead. There is no going back. Taking a long sigh, she begins to back away, away from the last murder she has committed, to another person she once cherished deeply.

And then Avalel’s eyes open.

A blade suddenly materializes and speeds towards Kavlina, barely scratching her mask as she jumps back on instinct. And before her now is Avalel, rising to his feet like a corpse reanimated from its grave.

His now-regenerated left eye, void-black with the starlike symbol etched inside, glares at her with terrifying intensity. His right arm is once again a blade, his body filled with a renewed sense of vigor. The eight blades have now all materialized, hovering in a circle behind him like a halo. All his wounds have healed themselves at an alarmingly fast rate, the only traces of damage now being his hole-ridden armor and shattered visor, revealing the monster resurrected.

Kavlina staggers, her blade still dripping with the blood from Avalel’s skull. As she stares into the familiar yet foreign face of Avalel, she realizes his right eye has also turned completely black, etched with that same sickly red symbol.

“O death, where is your victory?” Avalel convulses in laughter.