was the ultimate ability of Sanguine. It was a passive ability that gave Sanguine a chance to inflict his victims with , negative status through his normal attack and damage-dealing abilities. Units inflicted with status would deal an additional 30% damage to enemy units at the cost of receiving 50% more damage to themselves. Units inflicted with became unable to use their stealth ability and had their position revealed to opposing player until the expired. On its own right, this ultimate was nowhere as powerful as it should be. However, the moment Sanguine managed to unlock the perk , which add a unique debuff to Sanguine’s normal attack and damage-dealing abilities, became a game-breaking ability. It forced the victims inflicted with targeting the nearest targets suffered with the same status for 15 seconds, 20 seconds and up to 30 seconds on the final ability upgrade. If there was no target with within range, the victim would attack itself.

In the Creators’ words, was the evilest, most horrifying, living liquid to ever exist. Men know not terror until they see the flesh-eating miasma of Pestilence. Men know not evil until they taste the sweetness of the Kiss of Death. Men know not horror until they see Thrall’s dance of decay. But a thousand terrors, a thousand evils, and thousand horrors could not match three drops of cerise slime fall out of Sanguine’s body. Once a man marked by Sanguine and the slime of madness, he is beyond salvation for not even Death would save him.

“It was supposed to be just a stupid game mechanic,” said he, describing the whole situation, though neither Meireen nor anyone else could understand his meaning at the time. Meireen often caught him repeated the same phrase over and over again, from time to time.

He was a man from the Creators’ realm.

Thirty years of prolonged wars were but one short hour to him and his kinds. The wanton destruction, the never-ending killing, the billowing chaos that happened on Escana, they were merely aspects of a greater game to him, as they were to the Gods and Demon Lords.

“It was just a stupid game,” said he. Gods don’t cry and surely, Demon Lords would not. Not even, the Merciful Goddess shed a drop tear for the chaos and destruction that she was partly responsible for creating. But he did. His dark, teary eyes swelled up with a billowing fury. Rosy lips twisted shouting angry curses. He was furious, but not for himself. Gods of this land, goddesses of that land, holy spirits, divine apparitions, regardless of their name or origin, would find their way to his curses, included in all creative sorts of profaned manners.

When even the curses could not save him from his fury, he took it on the very shape of Madness. Every time he snapped his fingers, the victims of Madness turned their weapons on their once captor and slaver in a red blur of frenzy. It did little to lessen his fury. He knew it. But fury was fury for what fury’s worth.

The three shapes of Madness howled as they were being torn and mauled by their once victims. But boiling beads of fury still rolled like an unbroken stream. His hurt, bitterness, and rage remained whole.

That evil thing, that red, cloudy slime was neither a game nor a stupid mechanic of a stupid game. For Meireen and those who have suffered the same fate as her, it was an abyss of despair and hurt.

The mud of madness that came out of Sanguine’s body was a concoction of eldritch nature, created for a malevolent purpose. Immaterial yet material, cruel yet sweet, amnesia-inducing yet memory-reinforcing. Its properties were contradictory and complex beyond words, but above everything, it had a will of its own, fully sentient like a miniature of Madness himself. It turned people’s sanity into a toy for its master to play with, and to break.

“You think you know what madness is? Do you think you are madness? You think your sorry slime is the root of madness? Good, wait until I show you the true look, the true sound and the true nature of madness. I sincerely wish that when that time comes, your belief is still steadfast and firm. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth and madness for madness. That, I promise you,” he swore as Meireen and his many followers listened.

His understanding, his rage, and empathy was an appeasement, a consolation that Meireen got. That alone was enough for her.

Just like the other slaves to the slimy mud created by Sanguine, those who tried to defy him through suicide, Meireen could clearly recall her final moment of clarity on Escana. It was among the most transparent pieces of memory that she still had, unaltered, untainted and unclouded. That malevolent red mud purposefully left this memory intact to mock her. It took great delight in making Meireen remembered all of that.

It was a time when madness was an opponent she could naively fight off by having a pointy end of a dagger thrust into her flesh. As long as she could stay awake, she would remain herself, her mind would be hers, Meireen had believed.

Little did she know how wrong she was. And the red mud reminded her of that at every constant.

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Meireen could feel the immaterial substance inside her swayed with agitation and rage. It could no longer change her decision.

For a person who was facing her inevitable doom, her visage, though darkened with fatigue and self-inflicted harm, contained no trace of fear.

Her trusted swords, her partners for over seventy years, were gone from her sides. Her enchanted bow and quiver were elsewhere. Her dread-instilled war glaive, which has never separated from her side for well over 700 years, was missing from her calloused, scarred hands.

Meireen clad in a white, modest tunic and an ankle-length dark, flowing skirt. She was without her armor. Her imperial-made full armor, a decorated vest weaved from rose-dyed Arachnee’s silks with Titanite plates inserted inside and a purple lotus sewed outside, metal reinforced greaves, vambraces, and fauld with shiny Titanite rivets, a Titanite crescent-shaped helmet without a visor, all composed the infamous mold that put fear to the hears of the enemies of the Empress, the shape of the Sword Demon; gone.

Without that armor, she has returned to be Meireen. Just Meireen. No longer a Sword Demon of the Empress, no longer the Sword Demon of the Chaasenods.

Without the burden of her armor and weapons, a strange wave of liberation lapsed over Meireen’s jaded frame. She had led a quiet, lonesome lifestyle for 700 years before she became known as the Sword Demon. This must be what’s a homecoming is like, she thought. Meireen felt comfortable knowing that she would depart the mortal world, in a serene quietness and obscurity.

Meireen reckoned that she has never been a person of many words. Her special-trained troops, her students, and even her liege often had a very tried and true time to interpret her intention.

She spoke to weapons more than she spoke to people. She knew weapons and killing arts more than she knew the heart and the mind of people.

Meireen was never good at expressing her intention and opinions. She was never a talker or a writer, yet columns of elven logogram endlessly flowed out of her crude, unembellished penmanship. She, the Sword Demon of Chaasenods, the Valierra of the Empress, has descended on the world with blades in her hands, yet she would conclude her life with pen, ink, and paper. The brief recognition of the greatest irony of her life brought a small chuckle to her dry, broken lips.

Meireen thought of her students. The Empress and her generals often deployed Meireen’s students as her doubles on different fronts to keep her enemies guessing and confused. None of them have seen their second century yet. Spirited, ambitious and idealistic, they were, but still too young, too inexperienced, and too far from becoming weapons of the Chaasenods. Meireen suddenly regretted not spending more time with them. But life had not given her much of a choice. Between being a teacher of four or a sword of a nation, she could only choose one. The world needed a sword, and thus, Meireen had prioritized being that sword. Meireen had never regretted being that sword. She only regretted not spending more time with her students.

Meireen thought of her still unrealized dream and her liege. She realized just how much she yearned to see the completion of her dream.

So, this is how I would die, Meireen thought. Her greatest regret poured into her crude penmanship and reflected before her eyes.

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Children, the worst fate that could happen to a Chaasenod’s weapon is not a served limb or a broken bone, or disability or her mortality. It is her emotions. It is her weaknesses, the dissemblance of a weapon.

Thus, the first thing that the children of the Chaasenods were taught to kill is their own emotions, their girlhood, and boyhood, that or they must relinquish the word Chaasenod from their name.

To be a daughter or a son of the Chaasenods means to live without emotion. Without fear. With neither sorrow nor joy, neither lust nor greed, no emotion, as every weapon should be.

A good Titanite knows no father, no mother, no sister, no brother, no relative, no rivalry, only her sworn master, herself and her foes. If our master commands us to slash, we slash. If our master commands us to kill, we kill.

Weapons of the Chaasenods are held in the highest regard.

We are Titanite in flesh. Therefore, we must live according to that reputation.

A person bearing the Chaasenod name spends every breathing moment to become a weapon. But before that, every child of the Chaasenods was told of a story of three siblings.

It was the same story that you all have listened to many times.

Kardia. Mana, and Anima, the three siblings.

Kardia, the body is the vessel to house Anima, the astral body of a person. They are twins. Identical in appearance, but their nature was vastly different.

Mana is the soul, the sister of the twins. She is the knot and the glue that tightens the Kardia and Anima together.

Anima is the spectral body that breaths life to Kardia and Mana. Without Anima, there would be no life. If Anima is broken, Mana ceases to be and Kardia would soon follow.

If Kardia, the body is destroyed, Mana fades and Anima drifts into the void.

If Mana is depleted, Anima would separate from Kardia.

For such reasons, children of the Chaasenods were taught to treat Kardia, Mana, and Anima with equal importance. We were taught to learn about them intimately without neglecting one.

Every son and daughter of the Chaasenods was taught to bond with these three siblings. This is the first step to become a weapon of the Chaasenods.

Kardia is the strongest when the Great Throne lightens Escana in its glorious radiance. It is the time when daughters and sons of the Chaasenods would learn to wield a weapon of their choice among the 366 weapons listed in the Chaasenod Record, swinging that weapon in dull and joyless repetitions.

By swinging our weapon repeatedly, we learn to strengthen Kardia to give more room for Anima to grow. Until we were allowed to stop, our blades must travel with cold discipline and impeccability at every breathing moment, that or canning, or denouncing the Chaasenod from our name. “Children of the Chaasenods know no pain. Children of the Chaasenods know no pain. Children of the Chaasenods know no pain,” every son and daughter of the Chaasenods practices their blades, chanting that spell repeatedly to denounce the weaknesses of their Kardia. It is a spell that every weapon of the Chaasenods is familiar with, for we were made resistant to pain like that.

When the light of the Great Throne has truly faded from the world, it is the time when Anima becomes most active and Mana would become more apparent. Children of the Chaasenods would be taught to communicate with their Mana and Anima. Children of the Chaasenods learned to disassociate their consciousness from their Anima and Kardia to observe of the circulation of their Mana.

By tapping into our Mana circulation and reshaping her, we tighten and strengthen the bond between our Anima and Kardia. Our Anima would learn of the change of our Kardia and grow up with him. Our Anima would try to heal any damage done to our Kardia.

Win over Mana, the twins would listen to you.

A triple helix ring shape would form when Kardia, Mana, and Anima live and breathe in tandem and alignment. Once a daughter of the Chaasenods has experienced that indescribable feeling, she would never forget. She would feel a euphoric joy of being whole and complete. She would feel invincible… like there was nothing in the world that could stop her or slow her down. And she was. Once she had experienced this joy, she would try to seek out this feeling again. This was the only stage of her training when she was allowed to feel and express her own emotions.

That triple helix ring shape would be accidental as it was ephemeral when a daughter was still inexperienced with being a mediator for the three siblings. But the more experienced she would become with being a mediator for these three siblings, the easier it would be for her to form that ring shape. Only when a daughter of the Chaasenods could keep and maintain that ring shape naturally, without any conscious effort, without thinking, she is ready to go through the next stage of her training, to undergo a ritual to become a true weapon of the Chaasenods.

Children, this ritual would be as long and painful as some of you would eventually learn.

“We, the Chaasenod, pray to no God for each of us is our own God and Goddess.”

“We are the master of our Kardia, Anima, and Mana. We don’t offer our Mana to a higher, immortal being in exchange for miracles. We make our miracles. We don’t give them our bodies and let them use our bodies like mediums to realize their will. We are the master of our Kardia, Anima, and Mana.”

I had lived through this stage of my training while chanting these sacred scriptures every day.

During this stage, you will learn that no longer will we be the mediator between the three siblings. We must learn to command them like Gods and Goddesses. If they disobey us, we must punish them and teach them to obey our commands. And when they obeyed us, we rewarded them. At the end of this stage, the euphoric joy of being whole and complete with the three siblings would be removed our body and consciousness.

When dawn arrives, we swing our dulled weapons at each other under the watching eyes of our teacher until our Kardia breaks. This is an important process that any weapon of the Chaasenods must go through. We practice our blades with the intention to improve our weapon skills while breaking our Kardia in the most orderly fashion.

…

Muscles first, sinew and tendons second, bones third, blood vessels and organs last. This is a five-stage process. Each subsequent stage would be much more painful and dangerous than the last. You would need a partner to accompany and watch over you at every constant through these stages. If the training ever became too painful for you, children, a drop of Lernenan poison in every three days will help. Remember, one drop every three days, more than that you will die. You will find the concoction of this poison at the Potion and Poison Section in the Chaasenod Record.

Dusk is when we are done with breaking our Kardia, we would hasten and widen our Mana circulation to its utmost stretching limits, enslaving our Anima to heal our Kardia and grow up with him in the most artificial manner.

This is the most dangerous part of your training. You must not misjudge the limit of your Mana, whether it is her strength or volume. Only ask the exact amount that your Mana could offer, nothing more and nothing less. More and your Anima would leave you, you will die. Less and your Mana would grow complacent with every passing day, it would be harder for you to be the master of the three siblings with each passing day

A daughter of the Chaasenods learned that everything that was broken through this process would be rebuilt stronger and tougher.

Your calloused skin and toughened muscles would eventually be able to stop the point of a blade. Your reinforced bones would eventually stop breaking from those hammers...

This was how weapons of the Chaasenods have been quenched. The more a Chaasenod quenched herself, the closer to a weapon she would become.

Our body was refined over time. Like that, every weapon of the Chaasenods is quenched in that dull cycle of self-destruction and reconstruction at every dawn and dusk.

…

We, the Chaasenods, are weapons. Our body is a weapon to kill everything with a material body. Our mana circulation is a weapon and even our soul is a weapon to cut immaterial objects. But being a true weapon of the Chaasenods means to embrace that dull ring of self-destruction and reconstruction at every breathing moment. That triple helix ring shape must form and complete as we breathe, its formation must not be dictated by the rise and fade of the Great Throne.

That’s how I had relentlessly quenched, tempered and sharpened myself for 700 years.

Until the day, when Her Majesty visited me in my humble abode, inspiring me to use my sword arms to slice the chaos of the world, 700 years I had lived, only three friends I had made and trusted.

Solitude was my first and oldest friend. For me, she has been the quietest friend. She quarreled with nobody. She betrayed nobody. She hurt nobody. She killed nobody.

Solitude is a friend you must learn Alfea. Solitude is good for you to dissociate yourself from your Anima and Kardia to learn the circulation of your Mana. Without knowing solitude, you will never be able to form the ring of Kardia, Mana, and Anima. To advance to the next level, solitude is a friend you must make, Alfea. I imagine that for someone who was not born and bred from the Chaasenods like you, it would be very painful and difficult. But to overcome pain, to feel no pain, is a ritual that every Chaasenod must go through and solitude is a friend you must make.

Widowmaker remained my most reliable friend. Most ridiculed Widowmaker at the first glance, for she was a most ordinary-looking glaive, an edge-tapered one wingspan of elven steel saber, two wingspans of Cloreon oil-treated Ironwood and a sharpened bolt at the end of the weapon. Unscrewing the bolt and Widowmaker could be broken into a three-sectioned saber whip, other than that, there is nothing special about Widowmaker.

Widowmaker was crafted without any inscription or ornate details or imbued with powerful enchantments. She was just an elven glaive that any experienced bladesmith could make. And yet, she claimed more skilled and famed blade users than any weapon I had ever wielded.

Widowmaker often reminds me that a Chaasenod does not have to master every weapon listed in the Chaasenod Record or wield an enchanted weapon without equal to be an accomplished swordswoman. One weapon is enough. Eldoroan, I have told you that many times before. And I will tell you again for as many times as I must. A child of the Chaasenods could spend a millennium learning a weapon and still know almost nothing about it. Trying to learn all 366 weapons at the same time would do you no good. One weapon is enough. Learning 366 weapons at the same time is as good as learning nothing. Eldoroan, you might believe that you have mastered the form and the weapon by remembering the stance, the attack, the feint, and the counter-attack. You are not. Child, the world calls us the Chaasenods, a lineage of prodigies, swordmasters, and Sword Saints. But there has been no record of a prodigy, master or a saint in our lineage. Only students. Only weapons.

Eldoroan, it is always better for a person to intimately know many weapons. Know more weapons will always give you an advantage. But a weapon of the Chaasenods hold one weapon and trust that weapon. Trust your weapon as if she is your soul mate. Entrust your life to her, learn to become one with her and she shall never betray you. I had defeated many great foes who wielded Divine Relic, great weapons and magical artifacts with Widowmaker because I had trusted her for 700 years. One weapon is enough. Eldoroan. Trust your weapon.

Albriza, to this day, Swansong remains my most reliable acquaintance. Swansong is an inseparable pair of Titanite blades that were married to each other by the Naharis himself, a husband blade and a wife blade. He is an unyielding Titanite long sword, straight and tapered, unbent, unbowed, undamaged. She is a full tang Titanite crescent, fair, thin, sharp and flexible. In his heroic presence, miracles would return to mana. No wound made by her edge shall ever heal. No distance or physical barrier could separate the pair for they will always find each other, faithfully returning to the hands of their master. No weapon or armor, unless a Divine Relic of equal power, could stop the point and edge of Swansong. I don’t know Swansong enough to call Swansong a friend of mine. But it was an irony that because of my short acquaintanceship with Swansong that I became known as the Sword Demon of the Chaasenods.

Beware Albriza, to be acknowledged by Swansong means that you would be feared as the next Sword Demon. It is a title uttered with more fear than respect. It’s a heavy burden. A Chaasenod does not pray, but I will pray that you, Albriza, you will…

…

…

Children. May you succeed where I had failed. May your weapons restore peace to the world.

I shall pray for the light of the stars to shine on your future.

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Your Majesty,

Forgive your Meireen for not being able to accompany you in this critical moment.

Short-sighted as I maybe, but I could see that with just one last push, your vision would be realized, and chaos shall be vanquished of our elven world.

It is my greatest wish to be your sword for one last time. But Meireen knows her limits. I know my limit. Meireen knows herself the most.

My arms are still much able, once a weapon of the Chaasenods, always a weapon of the Chaasenods. But my mind has regrettably muddled much. My clarity comes and goes… as fleeting as the winds. Every time my guard became lax, I heard the Whisperer’s honeyed words polluted my mind. The more muddled my mind, the more transparent that vile shape of madness has become. I have seen things… things that no mortals were meant to see. I heard things… I know not what I am becoming.

I fear not of my undoing. I only fear that I would become a burden for you, the generals and the troops. I fear of being the one to undo your noble dream in my muddle. I feel like I have become less of myself with every passing day.

Meireen has learned that there was nothing in this world could be more dangerous than that, a weapon of the Chaasenods’ making that lead your army into battles with a muddled mind.

Therefore, I want to conclude my life correctly while I still could. I want to conclude my life while I am still, Valierra Chaasenod Meireen, your sword.

Forgive your subject, Meireen, for not being able to write a better letter to you at this juncture. Neither the words nor the ink and the brush has been my friend. I still have much to learn about them as everything else.

“Children of the Chaasenods know no pain. Children of the Chaasenods don’t cry. Children of the Chaasenods are made of Titanite. Titanite has no tear. No heart. No emotion. No fear. No weakness.”

Like many of my ancestors, I grew up reciting the same words until I truly understood what they meant.

700 years I faithfully lived a weapon of the Chaasenods inside my house. Other weapons of the Chaasenods went to the outside world, seeking their master and fame. I remained inside the house, honing myself for 700 years. I only communicated and befriended with other weapons. I knew only weapons. I only talked to and with weapons. My heart is that of a weapon. I cared not for the fate of the world. I had no understanding of the darkness and the chaos of the world. I did not understand the world outside my house. I did not seek fame, yet fame sought me instead. Swordmasters of different schools came to challenge Meireen of the Chaasenods. So Meireen answered their challenges, my life was as dull and simple as that

Your Majesty had not looked down on my insipidity or feared my bloodstained reputation. Your Majesty had shown me that even someone like me, a weapon like me could make the world a better place. You have said that the Chaasenods are weapons created to slice chaos from the world, a sword to end all wars. You have said that the world needs me and my sword arms. You have said that you need me to end the chaos ravaging our lands.

In that noble vision, I believe. Since that day, fifties springs have passed. Male bodies I cut. Female bodies I cut. Monsters I cut. Reavers I cut. Soldiers I cut. Heroes I cut. Generals I cut. Kings and Queens I had cut. Demons I cut. Miracles I cut. The other weapons of the Chaasenods I cut. I have reaped many lives. Many. Too many lives have lost to my hands, too many that I have to doubt if our path was the right path.

Weapons don’t doubt, but I have cut down too many bodies that I had to start questioning things. Only when I started doubting, I saw and learned things. I saw that our soldiers have regained their dignity. Our forest regrew and ripened with fruits. Our people have found their shelters. The flame of war is being vanquished from our land. The decaying smoke of chaos is being pushed back to the edge of the world. In your exalted dream, Meireen has trust and her trust has been honored greatly. There is no greater joy for me, for Meireen.

It’s unfortunate that I could no longer pursue that dream as I am now. It’s unfortunate that I can no longer remain by Your Majesty’s side as your sword.

But lest Meireen’s absence clouds your vision. Lest my departure halt your noble aspiration. Your Majesty, sadden not for my absence and departure. Sadden not for Meireen, your subject when she would face Death like a true weapon of the Chaasenods.

Lest war continues. Lest our people continue to suffer. In my absence, my students would fill my spot. My students, even young and inexperienced as they are, they bear the word “Chaasenod” in their name. They shall be your swords. They shall help you realizing your noble aspiration in my absence.

Until this very day, Your Majesty remains the only person I could consider a friend. I am probably the luckiest of the Chaasenods to make a friend with a person. These days, I no longer fear my dissemblance from a true weapon of the Chaasenods. I no longer fear my own emotions, my own beating heart. I could finally see myself as both a person and a weapon, a being belonged to both worlds. That shall be my greatest joy as Valierra Chaasenod Meireen.

Weapons of the Chaasenods pray to no deity, no immortal spirit, but I will pray that Your Majesty shall be the one to vanquish the chaos from our world. I will pray that your noble dream would come true.

Yours truly, Valierra Chaasenod Meireen,

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The warbirds, Meireen watched them flapping their wide wings and flying away. With them, the letters contained her regret, hope, and dream. Her imperial made armor, her prized pole-saber, her legendary swords and bow, Meireen have trusted them to able hands to reach her students.

The Chaasenod Record has been safely passed down, from a teacher to her students. Her duty as the Sword Demon of the Chaasenods and Sword of the Empress had been mostly fulfilled.

The final dawn of her life was on the rise. The Great Throne rose from the shimmering copper sea and erased the darkness from Escana with its radiance. Meireen etched that vermillion radiance into her eyes, knowing that her final hours have arrived. She could have ended her life earlier. But there was a tucking impulsion inside Meireen compelling her to depart from Escana in the radiance of dawn rather than inside the cold shimmering light of the stars. Dawn was when the weapons of the Chaasenods destroyed their body. Dusk was when they mended their broken body. Meireen thought that it was only fitting that she would depart from the mortal world at dawn.

Meireen held the 108 Purifying Phoenix Beads tight inside her fatigued fingers, wrapping the opal-like beads around her throat. The phoenixes living inside the beads shrilled loudly. Their rejecting voices echoed inside Meireen’s sleep-deprived mind. The crystal beads suddenly darkened into an angry shade of red, telling Meireen its sizzling rejection. Just like before, she was, again, deemed unworthy to wear the Phoenix beads.

But she clung to the angry beads. She could feel the branding heat permeated from beads on her fair elven neck. But the burn hurt Meireen not. Pain was something every Chaasenod had become accustomed to in the process of becoming a weapon. The beads could hurt Meireen no more than her worst enemies had done to her mind or the damage of her own knives had inflicted upon her body to keep Meireen awake for a continuous twenty rising dawns. The purging fire hurt Meireen no more than any wound she had.

The purifying phoenix flame poured out of the crystal beads in a reddened hissing fury.

Meireen’s flesh was screaming for her astral body and Mana to heal it. Her skin mended. Her flesh regrew. Her body healed at an accelerated speed, refusing to be unmade by the flame. Her burns healed, just not fast enough to keep up with the anger of the purging fire. Meireen could smell the charred smoke came out of her rose quartz hair with the smell of burned flesh. Her astral body was being purged by the fire as well. Meireen could feel it.

Children of the Chaasenods know no pain, Meireen internally recited her household’s teaching. Her fingers refused to let the beads go. Her eyes sealed tight. The one hundred and eight phoenixes lived inside the beads sang their requiem and punished Meireen’s insolence. They consigned her into a fiery, punishing death. Meireen felt the phoenixes’ purifying flame destroyed her fair, chiseled body in the scorching heat. Her teeth tightened, allowing no weak whimper or moan to escape.

“Children of the Chaasenods know no pain. Children of the Chaasenods don’t cry. Children of the Chaasenods are made of Titanite.

Titanite has no tear. No fear. No emotion. No weakness…

Inside that purifying flame. No lament. No word. No tear. Valierra Chaasenod Meireen died like that. Her life ended too soon, her reputation and hands tainted, but her dignity was intact and her pride was unbroken.

She died the Sword Demon of the Chaasenods.

But death was not the end of Meireen’s story, not when her soul had been tainted with the dark mud that came out of Sanguine. The guiding wispy lantern flickered and cruelly faded into the boundless darkness. The garden of white Marthias flowers would not open to her presence. The flock of black moths flew away from her. The Queen of the Black Moon would not bestow Meireen her salvation and mercy.

Her Anima remained bound to the red mire of Madness.

Not even the sacred Phoenix flame could cleanse Meireen’s soul from the vile stigma of that reality corrupting mud, it was then that Meireen understood. Her ghostly heart sank.

In life, she was branded to be a slave of the Whisperer. In death, Madness claimed her as his trophies. Meireen fought, flailing at the specters of horrors without her swords. But even a Sword Demon of the Chaasenods could do nothing against a Demon Lord, alive or dead.

Meireen did not know fear but her astral body tightened, her jaws closed to not call out to Justice himself like any weakly mortal would have done. Jagged tentacles violently seized her astral body, yanking and dragging her to the world of stars and spirits, to the red dustiness of Kharigan, and the very pit of madness.

Insanity, Meireen saw their dark, pronouncing visages and shapes, all three of them, one that mentioned in stories and words at the hearth. The mouth, the brain, and the source of Madness. The Whisperer, the Projector, the Embodiment, they were beings of which only the most diseased minds could conceive. Insanity, there Meireen saw it, her inevitable despairing future. Those wailing bodiless heads, his bragging trophies attached to the Embodiment of Madness himself. Dark tentacles and chitinous legs poured out of their dugout eye holes and mouth hole… It was truly a godforsaken place.

Meireen instinctively understood that she was not the first and she would not be the last to be collected as a trophy of Madness.

“Be gentle. I quite like her. Don’t break her yet,” those monstrous light-bleached, lapping mouths whispered in a pure and maiden-like voice.

“Tis’ one a fighter among fighters. A worthy trophy for a worthy collector,” said the split brains with insect wings in a solemn priestly voice.

Meireen then heard his guttural cackle. Sanguine, the source of madness himself, the one who branded that red mire into her Anima, he twisted her strong ethereal body with his many tentacles and sawed through her neck with his jagged edge. Her world was broken into pieces and fragments of itself… her ethereal body into the Projector’s gaping mouth…. Her head was dragged into a corrupted unreality.

Dirty-red, slimy mire flooded her consciousness. The horrendous agony spiked through the very core of her existence. Pain was something that every weapon of the Chaasenods would scoff off. But this was something else. Weapons don’t scream… but in this mire coated unreality, they do. It was as if she was being unmade from the weapon that she had become. Tentacles coated with red slimy mire cruelly pushed through her earholes.

Children of the Chaasenods don’t cry. Children of the Chaasenods know no pain.

As her consciousness rocked back and forth in that reddened chaos, Meireen heard her brain made skin-crawling squeaky, ruptured sounds. Every movement, no matter how tiny, was an avatar of insidious hurt. The agony was like nothing Meireen had ever known. The wick edge of a cursed blade, the point of barb-headed arrows, the sizzling touch of bone liquefying water, the purgatory blaze of a herd of angry phoenixes, none of them was comparable.

It was as though there was a colony of worms and maggots crawling inside her head, scratching and poking and eating her brain. The Anima of a person would normally shut down to protect her Mana from this amount of pain…, and yet the reality violating mud kept things as they were. Meireen was no longer a master of anything.

Titanite has no tear. No fear. No emotion. No weakness…

Inside that reddened bowel, Meireen braved herself, gritting her teeth. Even when her brain was stabbed, poked and pulled, Meireen was determined to give the Demon Lords no satisfaction. The mire warped and tainted her memory. It dishonored her past. It dissected her life into unrecognizable pieces and polluted the pieces before patching up. Sometimes, she could not remember what her name was. But Meireen groaned not. She gasped not. She moaned not. She whimpered not. In life, she is Valierra Chaasenod Meireen. In death, she was still Valierra Chaasenod Meireen. She determined to be so, no matter how vain and fruitless it would be. She glared at Madness and his insidious cohorts with hatred and defiance.

She should have noticed the delight in them when she resisted the tortured agony and the branding madness. But she did not. Her resistance and defiance only fueled their sadistic madness.

Chitinous legs, small and big, clicked in a clustered frenzy. Meireen made no sound. The pointy tentacle crawled and stabled inside Meireen’s twitching brain, flaring her sight in the color of insanity. Meireen glared at them unflinchingly.

“Be patient…” The Mouth whispered an eerie reminder in her sickeningly sweet voice. “Don’t spoil this sweet little doll yet… Pretty doll like her is hard to come by.”

Trapped in of her branding agony, Meireen heard Madness himself rumbled, cracking laughter.

“I wonder what your real sounds are like. I want to hear them.” The Whisperer did what she was known for, whispering nothing good with her lapping mouths. She glided and knelt down on two knees next to Meireen’s head. The Whisperer stroke Meireen’s head in an eerie gentleness. Then slowly, her ghostly, cold hand reached out to a small feeler attached to Meireen’s head. Her teeth gritted, Meireen glared at the female Demon Lord while the Banshee Queen pulled that feeler like she was pulling a lyre.

A wave of unknown rippled through Meireen, bolting through her body, stabbing her. But it was not pain…It was something else… It was the most sickened, nauseating feeling that Meireen had ever experienced in her entire life.

“I have always believed that the myth about Lust’s sensual touch is highly exaggerated,” the lipless mouths curved, “Don’t you agree with me, little doll?” The Mouth of Madness said and pulled another feeler.

There was nothing down there beyond her severed neck. Yet Meireen felt the throb of her body, the twist, the ache, and something disgraceful, something worse. Meireen bit down on her lower lip and glared at the lipless demoness with a vehement hatred. Bolts of carnal depravity stabbed and violated the parts of Meireen’s Anima that should no longer exist. Madness, Meireen was made to feel perverse presence it and rut with its defiled touch.

Once a weapon of the Chaasenods, always a weapon of the Chaasenods.

“How could that featherbrained whore do this? I laugh,” the Whisperer laughed with dark, sadistic delight, playing with those feelers inside Meireen’s bodiless head like she was playing a stringed instrument, except this instrument was determined to mute itself no matter what. “This, this is art, don’t you agree, doll?” asked the mouths.

Cruel was clarity when clarity was madness for Meireen, in and of itself. Clarity was shame, disgust, loath and pure undiluted wretchedness.

Children of the Chaasenods don’t cry. Children of the Chaasenods know no pain.

Those lipless mouths whispered to Meireen, encouraging her to yield to the probe of madness in a holy and inspiring voice of a Valkyria. “Beg, doll… You want more, don’t you? Let me hear your voice. And maybe I will save your soul.” The Mouth of Madness would come and go, treating Meireen like a precious, little toy to waste away her boredom. However, those lipless mouths had once never forgotten to remind the Source of Madness to be patient with Meireen’s silent defiance.

Every time the Whisperer arrived, she played and molested Meireen’s dignity, stabbing her consciousness with invisible hard bolts of depraved pleasure, ridiculing Meireen’s womanhood and dignity as she twisted pain into perverse pleasures. Meireen loathed the depraved unreality that she could end herself with a slash of a sword.

Then, in the changing cycles of clarity and transparent madness, an unsettling lucidity and quietness crept into Meireen. The familiar pain, the agony, the torture, the ridicule, the perversion were nowhere to be found in that inexplicable unsettling lucidity. Another ill-fated soul was being brought to the despairing bowel by those dark feelers.

There, Meireen’s hatred-engorged eyeballs almost exploded. She recognized the face of that tormented soul. Staring hollowly into the vast emptiness of the sanguineous pit, without fear, without hope, without thought, that soul was devoid of everything, just like a doll. Meireen recognized that soul. But that tormented soul did not recognize Meireen, or anything else. Elet. Elettsra Ch’ongkiona. The Empress of Ch’ongkiona. Even when she had become a slave inside the lightless quagmire of madness, a sword remembered her master.

“A…aaaa,” a wordless, weak sound escaped her lips.

“O noble aspiration. O Liberator and Protector of elven kin. O exalted vision befitting that of a ruler. O sword whose fame alone could bring peace. O regal altruism. One whoring her mind to the mud of madness for prophecy and the salvation of her people. One sullying her reputation for peace. O Sublime Empress, Mother of Ch’ongkiona, your nobility is unmatched. O noble Sword Demon of Chaasenods, your loyalty and devotion are unrivaled.” Yasubotay, the Brain, the Projector of Madness, pronounced in a priestly voice, “O sweet ignorant pawns of chaos. We thank you for the charitable amusement that you have provided us. It has been a specular journey.”

The three shapes of Madness laughed insanely.

Rasahlu, the Whisperer cackled, gasping in dark delight, saliva trailing, “From the beginning to the end, such sweet ignorance, such bubbly arrogance. A pair of mortals think they can vanquish chaos, not knowing that they were just pieces and puppets of chaos. Such delightful madness.”

“You believed that you were bringing an end to chaos? How can a blinded pair, one is a slave of chaos and the other is a mindless weapon of chaos, bring chaos to an end?” Sanguine applauded in his dark and guttural voice.

Inside that despairing bowel, Madness was speaking. Insanity was dancing. Lunacy was cheering.

“Aa…”

Children of the Chaasenods don’t cry.

“Aa…Aa…Aa…Aa…”

The Whisperer mimicked her sound, laughing, jeering.

Titanite has no tear. Titanite does not cry. But Meireen does, at the greatest negligence of justice. Something inside Meireen just shattered when that tormented soul was being planted into the bowel of madness before her head, rooted by vile tentacles and dark chitinous legs just like her.

Meireen began to sob.

Tears or what appeared to be the astral projection of tears poured out of Meireen’s sockets. Inside that sanguineous, despairing insanity, all of a sudden, she was no longer Valierra Chaasenod Meireen.

Just Meireen.

That sword, that weapon was no more. Broken. Shattered. No more a Sword Demon of the Chaasenods. No longer a weapon.

Just Meireen… and perhaps something even lesser than Meireen…

The shape of her dream, hope, courage, and dignity was being destroyed, mocked and sullied before her eyes. The tentacles raised, wiggled in the air and delivered a cruel promise of madness.

Her womanhood was unmade, dissected, mutilated, and wretched before her eyes.

Madness. One word to describe everything. Madness. She was just one unordinary trophy among the many trophies of Madness. Weapons don’t pray. But Meireen wretchedly sobbed for Niwdar to save her soul, their souls. Meireen pleaded Wonten to destroy her soul whole with a mighty swing of his hammer, ending her torment and shame. She beseeched Sinintee to incinerate her soul from the civilized world. Meireen implored Death for a merciful arcing great scythe. She prayed the primordial spirits of ancient times to undo her and everything else.

But in this godforsaken unreality, there was only madness. The Demon Lord twisted his tentacles, commanding his trophies to laugh and mocked Meireen’s despair.

Madness was laughing, cueing the music for insanity to dance and twirl in that reddened pit.

“What did I tell you? Pretty dolls like this, it is best to keep them clean,” the Whisperer snickered darkly.

Meireen helplessly watched her own heart being dissected, tortured and scrapped into pieces by those jaggy-tipped tentacles before her own eyes. Her dream and hope died with her heart.

Madness and his vile cohorts laughed as they did vile, unspeakable things to her heart.

The Brain revealed the details of his madness, the shape, the plan, the work, the end…

Her ideal shattered. Her oath lost. SOMEBODY, Meireen howled with despair.

But she wasn’t the only one. Everyone else was howling, one way or another. It took a mad person to understand the language of another mad person. Hitherto this moment, she could not understand them. It took one to know one. Someone, Meireen tearfully gurgled, drown in the rising reddened mud.

The Whisperer darkly played that sickened melody on the body of her pride.

Her pride broke. Someone, Meireen cried, end my torment. Her soul corrupted. Her will to fight lost. Her defiance tainted. Her dream was in pieces. Someone, end this madness, Meireen crumbled whereas her excruciating torment and insufferable madness remained whole. But her cries of pain could not come out when those centipede legs and slimy tentacles filled her throat. Even her cries belonged to the Embodiment of Madness. Her torment and suffering could only be heard when Sanguine allowed them to be heard. In death, Meireen became the trophies of Sanguine, the Embodiment of Madness.

Madness, she was made to understand it. If clarity existed inside her cognition, it existed to give her insufferable pain.

What was the past but the future? There was no difference. Madness was eternal, a loop without an end.

Hope, if existed, was just another insidious plot being cooked to deepen her despair. Clarity, she did not need it. Madness… Meireen was meant to feel the despairing touch of its slimy tentacles, to court with its defiling mud, to be forever stigmatized as its plaything inside that despairing pit… It was as if she felt better to be mad than sane. Somewhere inside the cold darkness of her despondent heart, Meireen has resigned to be with the Demon Lords’ sadistic whim and mercy forever. And forever means unending an eternity, even to a demi-mortal high elf like Meireen, forever means an eternity.

Her maddened despair would last until the unforeseen end of time, unto the prophesized end of the world, unto the imaginary end of chaos. Inside that malign bowel of madness, to that “unending eternity,” Meireen cried out helplessly until she could no longer distinguish the difference between clarity and murkiness, between pain and pleasure, between time and timeless. What she was, what she had become, a weapon, a woman, a sinner, a slave of madness, Meireen understood not, but the easiest thing for her to be was a weapon, as she slowly learned. But even so, madness would come to destroy her learning and laugh at her feeble resistance.

Madness was one, its forms and names were many. Madness was everything existed inside that unending world of maddened despair. Madness was everything that existed outside of that muddy bowel and any God who allowed such madness to continue.

Madness was the only hope and the only salvation, in and of itself.

Someone, end this madness.

Someone, end me…

A despairing eternity, her muddled voice was unheard.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

An eternity, Meireen’s ethereal eyeballs had been pushed out of her tentacle-filled socket, hung loosely on her cheeks, ever pendulous. Madness and his followers had found better fun and better toys.

King of this, Queen of that … toys

She learned.

Great Empress of this, Venerable Emperor of that … puppets

She was forced to learn.

Heroes, scoundrels… pieces and avatars of madness

She had learned.

That was what mortals were.

She had learned... her lessons…. The lessons intended for every mortal to learn with time.

Just like how she has forgotten much of her own past, they had lost interest in Meireen… once she had learned her lessons.

Once she was a prized trophy among the other trophies. Simply because she fought back… when she no longer resisted, dancing to their tune, crying to their Madness, yielding to the despair, she was not so different from any other poor soul.

Her eyes, they rarely registered anything else aside from the shapes of despair and the dancing rudiment of madness.

But there he was, at the edge of her vision, a diffused blur of sanguine that bled itself out of existence and turned into something else. It was like midnight of the world has stood on two and assumed the shape of a man. In a world where only the maddened redness existed, he was darkness.

That strange man, who materialized out of the air and stood tall at the center of the bowel of madness, he slowly stood at the focus of her world.

His teeth were gnarled and twisted. His face, tear-drenched, snot dripping. His dark eyes flickered with unspeakable rage.

Meireen did not even know who he was, or what he was. She did not know if he was just another delusion that her muddled, weakened mind had created to escape from her endless agony.

Like oil to water, he appeared to be untouched and above everything that existed inside that world of maddened despair. He did not belong there, not inside that despairing pit of madness. But like an alien apparition, he sobbed into his hands and fell to his knees.

Meireen knew not why he was crying. But, he was always crying. “It’s alright. I am here,” cried he, in a strange tongue. She should not understand what he had said at the time. But somehow, she just did. He sobbed with a tear and snot painted face, freeing one orc head from the vile clutch of madness. He was not afraid of that howling head or disgusted by the mud corrupting it. “Just a little bit more. I am here,” he promised to a kobold head in a teary voice, gagging and crying as he slowly slaved his back through the vile horrors, freeing even more bodiless souls from the grip of Sanguine’s tentacles. He was clumsy. He got his footing entangled with the tentacles and fell to the red mire. But as he fell, he tried to protect the heads inside his arms. “Get it done, get it done,” said he, like he was encouraging himself as he stood up. One by one, the jagged tentacles were pried out. The centipede sectioned bodies and legs came off, clutching to that crying man’s body before he gave them something bizarre and alien to latch onto in the place of the heads.

It was as if Meireen has been dragged from one maddened unreality to another maddened unreality.

Human, orc, elf, dark elf, high elf, titan, garuda, he saved them all. Arachnee, faun, nagas, draconian, he did not discriminate. Men, women, he apologized, and cried, and howled for them all even though their suffering was not his fault.

He wrapped their head inside his arms, crying as he heavily waded through the thick muddy ground of the red pit. He did not just free them from the pulsating manacles of madness. He drained that maddened mire from their soul as he freed them. The mud of madness poured into his astral body and thickened with every soul he liberated. The sanguine mud thickened and solidified inside his soul. But he was as untouched by the mud as he appeared.

That crying man was more of an alien abomination than the three shapes of Madness themselves.

He appeared empty-handed and disappeared with heads in his hands.

“I will come back…” In a teary voice, he always promised to world that he would return. It was the weakest of promise to ever be vocalized. But he would return, true to his word. And every time he reappeared to fulfill his promise, he became more emboldened with each trip.

He was crying. Tears streamed out of his sockets like a flood. Always crying… He has always been crying like a child. It was doubtful that someone was crying so much could get anything done. But like a miracle, he always pulled through.

Meireen did not know if he was another malign illusion created by the twist sadism of the brain of madness, another insidious trick to play with her hope and despair, a reality that she had become so used to…. Hope, if it existed, it was meant for an insidious plot of the Projector or the Whisperer…. She had learned many times that hope existed only to be crushed in cheers and applauses. She could no longer distinguish reality from madness. Kindness and vileness were just a different form of despair. Meireen was afraid of him, that crying man whose soul could turn the viscous mud of madness into a small solid emblem hiding inside his chest.

His existence, his deed, his tears were too hopeful to be true. She was more afraid of him than Madness himself, or the Whisper or the Projector. She was afraid that he was a fanciful work of her fragmented mind hoping to save itself.

In this sanguine-colored bowel of despair, he was the most insane thing to ever happen.

“I am here,” he said. He knelt before Meireen, ignoring her screaming, carefully freeing her soul from Sanguine’s vile grip as Meireen bit his hand like a feral beast to chase him away. He held Meireen’s head inside his lanky arms. She could not tell if he was real. But the radiating warmth of his fingertips permeated into her, the soothing sobs that came out of his lanky body, they felt strange to Meireen.

“It’s all right, I’m here,” he sobbed feebly.

Were his words meant to deliver to her or someone else… Meireen did not know. She did not know him, or did she? Meireen could not tell. But she felt the meaning, the pain, the feeling, the weight behind every word he spoke.

A gasping breeze weakly leaked out of her severed throat, but whether it was a wordless sound or a soundless word, it did not matter. Meireen thought that she must be howling, but that feeble, gasping wheeze was all she could muster. Had she always been this helpless? Long had her windpipes been clogged and filled with those vile tentacles and the muds and the slime. Those tentacles and centipede legs had long been her mouth and lungs. Meireen did not remember how to make her own sound. Long had she been reduced to a puppet of madness’s sadism.

His tears rolled, boiling her cheeks, his snots dripping, staining his cloth. “It’s all right. I know. I am here,” he choked in his tears, his forehead touching hers. She should not understand the meaning of his words. But inside this unreality, she just did.

It was like he could understand her unspoken word. He wept harder. Every sob of his was hurt and torment like there was a ball of spikes clogged in his lungs. Every word leaked out of his lips was pain and tears.

Her memories were a cloud of madness. Meireen doubted them. She could not tell if she had known this person in the past. But nobody had ever cried this much for her. But he, a stranger was crying for her. He was crying so much that he must have covered enough for her share.

“It’s fine. I am here,” he choked, gasping out the words. “It’s fine. I am here,” he reassured Meireen as if she was just a hurt child, even though he was more of a hurt child than she was. She could feel his teary lips on her forehead. He was shaking with hurt... A weak reassurance, a declaration born of make-believe, “It’s all right. I’m here,” yet he reassured her in a choking and hurt voice.

Even if her soul was condemned to be drowned inside the mud of the despairing pit of madness again, even if her mind was once again fragmented to the endless torture and abominable mud, even if Meireen was no longer herself, his teary voice, Meireen would never forget.

“It’s fine. I am here.” In a sobbing voice, he spoke like proclaiming the end to the world that Meireen knew.

Just like that, the world darkened to a serene end.