Maria tore through the membrane and was washed out onto the ground in a spreading puddle of black blood. Her muscles sprung into action, within seconds she was up on her feet, yet utterly dazed by the barrage on her senses. Wherever she looked her vision began to sharpen until even the smallest detail and crack in the walls looked as visible as if she stood right next to it. The smallest sound from far away made her ears twitch and her head spin in the direction, and the smells of death and bloodshed of the battlefield around them filled her head.

"Wise Master, great sister?" Tetra's voice dragged Maria's senses towards her, the trembling, feeble figure. Maria approached her servant, and with every step she seemed smaller, until the Sage had to bend her neck back to maintain eye contact.

"Sin, she." Maria lost her voice as the images of her servant flashed past, melting away in front of her eyes. "She is no more." The muscles in her arms tensed, both of them. First now did Maria look down at her body, one which she could barely recognise anymore.

Her clothes were mostly intact, if blackened beyond recognition and torn in some places, her shoes were missing.. Her limbs were darkened in the same way, but it was not liquid, but her very skin. Unworldly smooth it glistened in the light, covered in a web of intricate scales and spinal spikes that protruded out of it, giving them the appearance of hooks. The nails on her feet and hands had become warped, sharp talons.

She brought her hands to her face, feeling the lack of her lips, and just how far her mouth had widened. It spread from one end of her face to the other, a row of sharklike fangs, behind which Maria could feel several more.

The young master took a step back as she stared at her figure in shock, the more she stared the stronger her senses focused and overwhelmed her mind, until the voice of Tetra pierced the spiral.

"Remember, great master! Remember yourself, as you were, to return!"

Duly Maria closed her eyes, clawing at the recesses of her mind, of times not so far behind, yet they felt like years at this point. When she looked over her clothes at the day of her graduation, at Lavelelier's manor. Even in her memory her own senses were overwhelming her, the pale look of her skin, her meagre stature, her pathetic attempts of emulating her ancestor's hair.

The disgust was sealing her throat, making her skin crawl. A chill ran down her spine and throughout her body, only getting worse as her mind wandered further. To the pain of her arm being torn off, Elizabeth walking off without her, her ruined house, Sin pierced by the great spear.

All the things she could not have prevented.

When her eyes fluttered open, her view was blocked by a curtain of sleek black hair, reaching down all the way to her ankles. She brushed it aside, her arms once more pale and ordinary, save for the pitch black nails.

"Great master, I fear that," Tetra was trembling as she spoke, her fingers weaving a mirror into the air to hold up for her. "It was perhaps, not a total success."

Maria's eyes shot to the bright green of her reflection's, for just a moment she could not recognise herself. She had always been pale, of course, but now all colour had drained from her skin, save for the dark black veins showing through. Her lips had returned, though the slightest movement of it betrayed her fangs.

But what took her attention whole was what had sprouted from her head. Three black metallic horns arched upward into the air, a mimicry of the crown Sin had placed on her head. Maria rose her arms up to touch them, smooth and almost warm to her touch.

"It will do for now." Had she always sounded this strong? It was only natural, of course, for her to sound this way now, but the change had her pause.

"How long was I gone?"

The look on Tetra's face told Maria more than she had wanted to know.

"About three hours, great master. Most of the fighting has died down, We, we were victorious, however the losses have been, well, catastrophic. Our allies are reduced to a fourth of their strength and" Tetra's body froze up, her eyes widening in terror under her master's gaze.

"Where is Elizabeth."

Her master did not wait for a reply, she marched off with her hair waving through the air at her pace.

Tetra rushed to keep up, stumbling multiple times before she resigned to magic. The sage stepped onto the air, a few inches off of the ground, levitating at the side of her master.

Maria's mind raced towards greater worry, her entire body filled with stinging heat and anxiety. It was only punctured by a realisation in a corner of her perception. The feeling of connection to a vast web, so tightly woven that she could almost see it.

A web with her at the centre.

They arrived at the great plaza, to a scene of triumphant carnage. Bodies of humans, Paladins, monsters still laid where they had been slain, an overwhelming sight and smell that had a trickle of blood run out of the corner of her mouth. She wiped it away and held her stomach.

How long had she not eaten?

Too long ago, and way too little.

What was left of the soldiery stood attention as she approached, but more than them Maria felt her kin. On the streets, the roofs, circling through the blackened skies. From the meekest specimen to the mightiest, she knew exactly where they were, their presence a writhing extension of herself.

Menagerie was awaiting them, a cohort of her armoured monsters behind her. The beast was hunched over, wringing her hands and hurried toward Maria.

"Young master, I am overjoyed to see you safe, it is truly a relief, though I of course never doubted your return, it nonetheless-"

Her voice died down under her master´s gaze, without another word she moved out of her way, the ranks of her cohort parting to make way and give view.

To a pristine white cloth, laid over and obscuring a body.

A silence spread over the plaza as hundreds of eyes followed Maria´s gaze, as every last black-blooded monster stared.

Then came the growling from the streets, the hissing from the roofs, screeches from the air as the cohort around Maria began to tremble, their armour rattling.

With every step Maria took towards the body, the louder the noises became. The soldiery backed off until they reached the wall, crawling when they could not move otherwise.

She stopped right in front of the body. The height, the feint smell she could sense, what constituted for her heart now knew. She leaned forward to peel away the cloth, stopped by Menagerie´s shaky voice speaking up, through the cacophony of noise.

"My master, it would be best, I am certain that she would want you to remember her as she was."

The gaze of the horde shifted along with their master, onto the shaking beast.

"You let this happen."

Maria´s words returned agency to Menagerie. She threw herself at her master´s feet.

"I moved as fast as I could, my master, the lady Merlayne fought on the other side, beset by our foes, we cut our way through them but before we could reach her-"

The words became stuck in her throat as Maria grasped her hand around it. Her nails grew back to claws, sinking deep into her flesh as her grip continued to tighten.

Until it cracked and tore, severing her head from body. It fell to the ground, writhing and grasping at the open wound. The gaze of the horde shifted, following that of their master, to the cluster of soldiers.

"Who was in charge here, who dares to live while your lady died?" Maria´s words were a barely coherent howl, echoed by a hundred throats.

The cohort split, and encircled the soldiers as Maria approached them. "None? Nobody? Yet you're alive, on the very same field, what is the worth of a soldier who will not die for their betters?"

Then, finally, out of the crowd stepped a woman. Her armour was torn, and her left arm shattered, her red hair falling into her face as she saluted.

"Captain Leia, your excellence. Part of your retinue, we arrived as a relief force." She nodded back to the soldiers behind her. "Lady Merlayne´s own were eradicated before we could reach her."

The captain was shaking as Maria came closer, but she did not scurry backward. "We did what we could with the means we had, your excellence. Every one of us would have gladly died for her ladyship."

The scales were once more taking over Maria´s body, her fangs bare as she stared back at the broken soldier.

"Then why are you alive! Why are you miserable worthless cretins alive while Eli is dead!"

Leia sank to her knees, placing her hand above her heart. "Our contract, your excellence. We're to fight and die as ordered."

She stared back into Maria´s eyes, the black streams running down her face. "Glory to house Merlayne. Glory to Len-Fey."

Leia closed her eyes and awaited the end. She waited, and waited. As Menagerie regrew her head, staying in a crawl, fearfully staring up at Maria, as Tetra remained frozen in place and the monsters around them writhed and roared in place of their master.

"FINE"

The word was screamed out of a hundred warped throats, yet not by Maria herself. She turned and marched off, the ground cracking under every step as she returned the way she came. Away from the field of carnage, away from the overwhelming presence of her kin.

Away from the death of her hope.

Her steps lead her back to the tower, where Elaine was waiting. The prisoners, now firmly shackled, were taken away further into the city, now in a more hurried pace as the lady approached.

Elaine´s eyes were overflowing with tears just as Maria´s, but any words she wanted to speak were silenced by her master´s voice.

"Stay. Don't come in, and kill anyone who tries to."

Maria did not see the small beast bow, her gaze was pinned on the dark right in front of her, the entrance to the tower.

The inside had been cleaned, a dead silence greeted her. She made it all the way into the middle of the room before her legs gave way underneath her, before the last dam broke and the silence was torn apart by wailing that warped as her body did.

She no longer saw what was in front of her, only images of Elizabeth. The countless times she had watched her from afar, the first time they talked face to face, the short few, precious moments they had been close.

There was nothing to cling to, so her clawed hands tore into her body. They ripped open wounds, but she could hardly feel them as her cries devolved into bestial screaming.

She tried to recall her voice, their conversation, how she had called her darling, but it eluded her, the more she tried to grasp the memories, the further did they dissipate.

Her hands let off her body, only to maltreat the ground instead, digging up the stone and shattering it in her grasp.

The feeling of pain clouded any feeling of her body, of how it changed, warped and grew. For what did it matter now.

Even in the depth of her despair, she was still part of the web, the centrepiece of a massive whole.

And still she was completely, utterly alone.