I barely had time to realize what had just happened before I was manhandled by Junogloris, who sped off into the forest once again.

“Of all the unbelievable, stupid, gods damned- ARGH!”

“Mistress Luna-”

“And she didn’t even tell us what the signal is! How on earth are we supposed to wait for a signal if we don’t even know what it is?!”

“Mistress Luna!”

“What?!”

“Pardon my disrespect, but it would be best to hold your tongue.” he said, his gaze focused on the field ahead of us, “His messengers are about to make their entrance.”

No sooner had he said that that I felt a wave of faith crash into me, nearly overwhelming my anima. The space in front of Tabitha rippled like a placid lake disturbed by a hurricane.

And then, they arrived.

I felt their presence before I even saw them, their overwhelming aura like the sun, blotting out all other presences within at least several kilometres, even my own. Twenty of them floated where there once was empty space, and even more were materializing from behind Tabitha, surrounding her in a sea of gold and white. The symbols on their foreheads shifted with each second, but I knew what they meant. Blazing on their foreheads, in every language known to man, was the name of their master.

Rage grew within me, but it was held back by something even stronger. I could hear my heart beating like a war drum as I understood what I had just witnessed.

“They travelled from within the Thoughtstream…” I said, my mouth dry. “Their devotion to El must be absolute…” Junogloris grunted in agreement, but the fear in his eyes told me that he knew what the other possibility was. That they could freely travel within the Thoughtstream, not by force of will, but by magnitude of power. The possibility that the messengers before us each had an anima so robust that they could weather the essence draining effects of the Thoughtstream like it was nothing.

“All of this for little ol’ me? You shouldn’t have~” I heard Tabitha’s voice clearly, I saw thin, almost ephemeral wisps of green flickering in her mouth. The messengers simply stared at her, surveying the remnants of our battle.

“So where’s Lacan?” asked Tabitha, which drew immediate hateful glares from all present.

“Your Lord, in His wisdom, gave you a name to address Him by, so that you may not blaspheme by uttering His true name with your filthy mortal tongue.” hissed the messenger closest to her, “This does not give you licence to take it in vain, vile apostate.”

“Meh. I’ve been called worse, by better.” Tabitha said. “Save your bullshit for someone who cares, Remy-”

“I am He Who Is His Divine Thunder, you blasphemous heathen!” said the messenger.

“And I am She Who Could Not Give Less of A Shit.” said Tabitha. “Answer the damn question.”

“He should not be troubled with meeting with filth.” said the messenger, indignation clear in his voice. “We are more than enough for the likes of you.”

“He knows that the contract clearly states that he pays me personally? That if he didn’t I get five times what was originally offered, yeah?” said Tabitha.

The messenger simply remained silent.

So she had been planning on luring her employer (Lacan, was it?) here from the very beginning? Just what is she thinking?

“And what of you? Though I see a forest ravaged by battle, I see no body before me.” the messenger said, looking at Tabitha with utter contempt. “Tell me apostate, where is Luna Invicta?”

There was as sound like thunder, and the space to the Tabitha’s side visibly cracked. All eyes were drawn to that impossibility as a pair of grotesquely burned fingers forced their way through. It was like witnessing a corpse dig its way out of its grave. And it was a corpse that I knew too well.

“Sister.” the messenger said, a look of concern on her face as he looked at the quivering, misshapen mess before her. “You should not have come.”

She was a far cry from the other messengers assembled. Her entire body was covered in horrible burns, her once beautiful face now disfigured beyond recognition. She had lost an eye, her nose was nothing more than a hole in her face, and the right half of her scalp was gone, exposing bone that had been burnt an ugly shade of grey. Her hands had shrivelled up, nothing more than brown twigs, and her body was worse off. She looked like a tree starved by drought and ravaged by disease. Yet she still crawled on her stump legs, inching closer to Tabitha like a maggot squirming towards a corpse.

“Luna…” said the messenger I’d fought. “Where is… Luna…?!”

“Impossible.” I couldn’t help but speak at the absurdity in front of me. No one should have been able to survive using the entirety of their anima as a weapon. She should have disintegrated, the idea that was her dissipated into the Thoughtstream. Her will must be beyond comprehension to keep herself together even after expending her very soul like that.

“Luna!” she gasped out, her voice like a death rattle. “Where… is… she?!”

“Sister, please!” said the messenger, Remy I believe was what Tabitha called him. “You need to recover! Let us handle this.”

“That’s not something you recover from, ain’t it?” Tabitha said, eyeing the quivering mess in front of her. “Looks like you’re barely holding on as is.”

“Will not die. Can not die. Not before. Mission. Luna!”

“Nice to see you haven’t changed, Silencer.” said Tabitha.

“I… am… She Who-” she stopped, coughing so violently that it sounded like she was breaking her ribs with each hacking fit.

“Sister…” Remy said, His soft gaze turned to hardest steel when he brought them upon Tabitha. “I will not ask again, mercenary. Where is the goddess Luna Invicta?”

“In a moment.” said Tabitha. She crouched down to the Silencer’s level, her emerald eyes boring into her opposites dull blue.

“You are in no position to be-”

“Tell me, Silencer. How many people were on that plane?” said Tabitha, her voice was still cheery, but her expression was anything but.

“What?” a confused expression was on what was left of her face.

“I fail to see how this is important.” said Remy.

“Of course you don’t. And I suppose none of you know how many people call this forest home, right? Or how many more depend upon it to live? The forest Lacan threatened to burn down if he didn’t find his precious goddess?” Though her tone remained even, even I could see that the tension between them was rising.

“Stop wasting our time with frivolities, mercenary.” said Remy, even as the circle of messengers that surrounded Tabitha grew tighter. “Get to the point, and give us the god-!”

There was a flash of steel. A splatter of red.

And the rest of her words were drowned in a sea of scarlet.

“Funny you should say that.” said Tabitha, her dagger dripping with fresh blood. Remy’s hands flew to his throat, desperate to close the gaping wound, his life flowing freely, staining his immaculate robe a deep crimson.

The messengers stood dumbfounded, paralyzed by the sheer audacity of what had just happened. Which Tabitha took advantage of.

In one swift motion, Tabitha plunged her dagger deep into Remy’s belly until only the hilt remained above flesh. Remy coughed up blood, splattering on Tabitha’s face, yet she didn’t flinch. With a grunt of exertion, she forced her dagger upwards, slicing through flesh like it was air, straight into Remy’s sternum.

Remy’s belly split wide open in a shower of blood and guts, a shower that Tabitha made no effort in evading. Tabitha withdrew her dagger, its crescent blade now a deep red, and Remy’s lifeless corpse fell to the ground.

Tabitha looked at the stunned onlookers, and said with a wolfish grin,

“Get some.”

I’m guessing that was the signal.

The messengers roared in fury and Junogloris and I both knew that retreat became an impossibility. We burst out of our hiding places and charged into the fray.

Junogloris loosed one of his arrows into the centre of the fray, skewering a messenger as it attempted to take Tabitha’s head. I looked to Junogloris, and he understood. He grabbed me and, with all his might, threw me directly into the field.

“You!” I heard the Silencer gasp out.

“So nice of you to join me, Lulu~” said Tabitha, even as her wicked dagger sliced a messenger’s arm clean off. His agonized screams amplified when Tabitha proceeded to gut him like she did Remy.

“Not like I had a choice.” I swung my backpack to block a beam of searing light. In the brief moment of respite, I unzipped my backpack and, with a flash of silver, broke a messenger’s arm.

“I’d ask if you had any idea of what you’d just done, but something tells me that I really don’t want to know the answer to that question.” I said, as I covered her back, warding off blasts of cold, flame, and wind with my backpack.

“That’s fair.” Tabitha said, she leapt back as a messenger jabbed at her with a lance, and before the messenger could draw back, she gripped the lance’s shaft and pulled the messenger in, directly into the waiting embrace of her bloodstained dagger.

A shower of blood and gore erupted from the slain messenger as Tabitha gutted her quarry once again. I have a sinking suspicion that she’s doing this on purpose. But to what end?

“Why are you-?” A storm of arrows interrupted my thoughts, impaling the two messengers behind us before they could attack.

“What are you waiting for?” yelled Junogloris from afar as he knocked another set of arrows, “We can only hold out for so long, cast your spell and hold these vermin in place already!”

“Oh sure, just cast a spell, freeze everyone, like it’s that eas-!” She was interrupted by the cutting edge of a golden sword, one she only barely managed to dodge, its blinding edge grazing her cheek and drawing blood. Her knife had shot out, aiming to kill the offending messenger, but he had already retreated, behind a solid defensive line of at least ten shields that shone brighter than the sun.

“Tsk.” Tabitha clicked her tongue in irritation, as she readied her dagger once again. And though her stance was solid, her dodges became just the slightest bit slower, her attacks a millisecond more sluggish. She was getting tired.

“Really don’t need you distracting me right now.” Tabitha growled out, even as she barely managed to get out harm’s way once again. She looked pointedly at me, “Mind telling him why using that spell would be less than useless?”

“Honestly, I was wondering that myself.” I said, as my makeshift shield deflected a warhammer’s crushing blow. I silently muttered a small blessing for the three of us, even as I know that it wouldn’t be enough.

“And the two of you are how old, again?” she asked, her strength renewed, she unloaded her gun at the messengers’ defenses, the bullets embedding themselves within the golden shields. With a snap of her fingers, the shields shattered, what once was protection a storm of razor sharp metal.

Or at least it should have been, had the broken shards not dissolved into golden motes of light the moment they made contact with the enemy. We, however were not so lucky.

“Move!” I pushed Tabitha to the ground and brought my shield up, just in time. Bits of empyrean metal pelted me like the world’s sharpest hail storm, shredding my pants, cutting through my shirt, every unshielded part of me put through a rain of shrapnel. But my guard held. Through a vermilion mist, I stood unbowed.

I held my backpack up and drew my laptop in my free hand. Looking like a child playing the soldier, yet none who saw me would ever doubt my prowess.

“You look ridiculous.” said Tabitha, rolling her eyes even as she loaded her gun.

Almost none.

“I can’t keep this up, Tabitha. Use that spell now!”

“Oh for-, It won’t work, okay?! That ‘spell’-” I’m pretty sure she would have done air quotes if her hands had not been occupied, “works by draining my target’s mana, or faith in this case, and replacing it with my own, essentially hijacking your internal leylines and flooding them with foreign energy, get it now?” My confusion must have shown clearly on my face, because she just sighed.

“Taking mana away from someone doesn’t make it just vanish, it has to go somewhere. And that somewhere has to be able to contain whatever’s in it, otherwise, well… Ever been in the centre of a massive explosion?”

“I have, actually. Four days ago.”

“Right. Imagine that, multiplied by at least four, more likely ten.” she said.

“So what you’re saying is…”

“My mana siphons could handle the two of you easily. It can’t handle even a third of one of them.” she said. “No worries, though, I don’t need that to put these buggers down.”

“Right.” I said, completely deadpan, “The fact that you’re covered in blood and almost out of breath inspires so much confidence.”

“it should!” she said cheerily, as she shucked off her coat and began to wield it like a matador’s cape.

The messengers surrounded us in a sea of blades, a maw of razor teeth that only a madman would attempt to meet head on. So it came as no surprise that our resident madwoman did exactly that, surging forth with utter glee. She was the wind, flowing effortlessly in between gaps in the messengers’ offense, always just a millimetre away from death, all blows glancing, all cuts mere nicks. All the while, that savage smile never left her face.

“All right you bloody bastards, who wants to die?”

“Enough of this!” yelled one of the messengers, his crimson hair as fiery as his rage. “We will suffer this indignity no longer!” His aura flared, outshining even that of his brethren, and he lunged at Tabitha, twin blades in hand.

“This is for my brothers!” he screamed, and he slashed at Tabitha so quickly that it seemed that his swords had become light itself. Twin crimson comets flew across space, aiming to take Tabitha’s head. And only managing to cut off a few strands of hair.

“So nice of you to volunteer!” Tabitha said, crouched low on the ground, a coiled spring, ready to strike. She burst forth, directly at the crimson haired messenger, who instantly took shifted his stance; one blade raised, parallel to his body blocking any incoming blows, and another beneath his raised arm, parallel to the ground, tensed and ready to cut down any who would dare to attack him head on. A stance chosen for its flexibility, ready to take on whatever attack Tabitha chose to do next. Or so I thought.

Tabitha’s leapt towards the messenger. The messenger’s blade was like a bullet fired from its chamber, flying with blinding speeds even as his guard remained solid. Tabitha, for all her skill, could never have broken through his simultaneous attack and defence. So she didn’t.

The blade sliced through empty air. The anticipated attack never came, with one solid stomp, Tabitha had forcefully stopped her charge mere millimetres from the messenger’s range, but also far from her own. Wasting no time, she used the same foot that had so savagely stopped her forward motion to pivot to the left with enough force that she should have torn her knee from its socket. And with that momentum she took the coat that was still in her hands, and threw it at her foe.

The messenger slashed at the thrown coat, slicing it in half… is what should have happened. Instead, the blade seemed to sink into the coat’s fabric underlining, like it had breached water’s surface, without going through the coat itself.

“Wha-” the messenger had swung with all his fury, and was unable to pull back before the coat fell on top of him. And in an instant, he too disappeared into the depths of Tabitha’s trenchcoat.

All eyes were on the coat as it fluttered to the ground. None of us believing our own senses. Even the angered messengers could only stare in disbelief, utterly shocked at the impossibility what we had just witnessed. We stood rooted in place, the battle forgotten momentarily.

A moment that Tabitha took advantage of.

Her hands now free, she drew her gun and with practised grace, fired.

To say that she killed them would do her a disservice, for in order to kill something requires effort, deliberation, a sense of struggle. Of which Tabitha had none.

Nine bullets. Nine headshots. Nine explosions of bone and blood. In less time than it took to draw breath, Tabitha had slaughtered nine of El’s most powerful servants.

And then there were five.

Tabitha calmly walked towards her coat, and none of the remaining messengers dared to stop her. What once was a united front was now thrown in disarray. Gazes that once held fury now held nothing but fear. For her part, Tabitha donned her coat once more, slowly putting it on one arm at a time, drawing out each laborious motion, each ruffle of fabric an unspoken challenge, a challenge which none dared accept.

Tabitha stood there, drenched in the blood of her enemies, looking every bit the madwoman that she was. Her gaze lazily swept across the remaining five, and she said, with a tone that could freeze fire,

“This is the part where you lot run.”

And run they did. The air shimmered so wildly that it felt like I was looking through water as the messengers made their exit, but not before shooting one last withering glare at the three of us.

“Well that’s done then.” Tabitha said walking back to me, even as we just gaped at her. “What?”

“What. In the world. Are you.” I said, my eyes glued to her impossible coat.

“This again? I told you, I’ll tell you late-”

“No!”

“Excuse me?”

“I said no! Gods damn it no! This is just too much!” I screamed at her, no longer caring how I looked in front of Junogloris. “The inexplicable longevity I can let slide. The faith potions were pushing it, but this?!” I gestured wildly at her trench coat. “This is just absurd! No, no longer! I demand an explanation or this alliance is off!”

“You’re not exactly in a position to be making demands, yeah?” she said. I stood my ground.

“Well all right then.” she said. She sighed deeply, and, before I could even register what had happened, she had already drawn her dagger and thrown it in my direction.

“GYAAAAHHH!!!”

To my surprise, that scream didn’t come from me. I looked behind me, at the source of burbling screams that seemed to drown in equal parts of agony and blood.

“I’m only doing this so that you’ll shut up, all right?” said Tabitha, even as she walked nonchalantly towards the screaming, writhing Silencer, whom she had just impaled on a tree.

“Wha-?”

“We only have time for three questions. Make it quick.” she said.

“Are- Do you honestly expect me to ask questions while you’re in the middle of slaughtering yet another messenger? Have you lost your mind?”

“Yes, and no. Probably? Maybe.” she said. She grabbed the hilt of her dagger and buried it deeper into the Silencer’s stomach, showering her once more with ichor. “Two questions left, and only because I’m being nice enough to only count that as one.”

“Heretics… vile apostates. Accursed traito-!” her words died in her mouth as Tabitha slowly brought her dagger higher, cutting through divine flesh like it was nothing, the curved blade keeping the Silencer in place, like a slab of meat hanging from a butcher’s…

My eyes widened as I finally realized the extent of my erstwhile ally’s depravity.

“That dagger of yours… It was never meant for combat.” I said. She just smiled serenely, even as she plunged the blade even deeper into the Silencer’s belly.

“A blade that curved actively gets in the way of thrusting techniques, and slashing is limited to parts of the blade that aren’t pointed towards you. Even then, bending metal by that much should make it so that only a relatively small portion of your blade should have a cutting edge. No blacksmith worth his salt would design a dagger that unwieldy. Which means-”

“What she wields is not an instrument of war.” said Junogloris as realization dawned on him as well. “That bloodthirsty blade was forged not for a swordsman, but for a butcher.”

“It’s a meat hook with a crudely forged hilt and crossguard.” I said. Tabitha’s smile grew wider as she slowly, excruciatingly, pushed the dagger upwards, splitting the Silencer’s belly open and covering Tabitha in a shower of blood and viscera. Even as the Silencer screamed in agony, Tabitha gestured at me to continue.

“But no mere meat hook should’ve been able to harm Junogloris, let alone slice through a messenger’s defences so easily. Then I noticed something. The way you fought, the way you never shied away from blood but in fact revelled in it, literally bathed in it even… And your inexplicable age. It reminded me of an old Yamato legend.” I said, even as I felt the bile rising to my throat at the implication. Even Junogloris had become pale. “The numbers change with each retelling, some say it’s a hundred, others a thousand, I’ve even heard it go up to six billion, but the story remains the same; bathe in the blood of myriad demons, and you yourself will become a demon. So I guess my first question-”

“Second question.” she quipped.

“My FIRST question, is this; just how much blood have you shed?” I asked.

“Heh.” she turned to me, leaving the Silencer impaled on the tree, “Let me set one thing straight, sure you can translate youkai as ‘demon’, but that’s pretty inaccurate. I mean, if I could only kill demons instead of the rest of you, I’d have never made it to year one hundred. To answer your question though? Honestly, mate? No idea. I stopped keeping score after a thousand.” With that said, she gripped her dagger’s handle and ripped it out of the Silencer, brutally maiming her in the process.

A dagger that has slaughtered so much of my kind, their last memories of being disembowelled,, their fear, their anger, their despair indelibly staining that accursed blade. A blade that has slain so many of the supernatural, soaked in blood brimming with power, that its become a relic in its own right, bringing death to the deathless on an ideal level; disregarding all defences, no matter how strong.

“You turned common steel into a relic that rejects the very idea of divinity, a weapon that kills on the level of concepts, through nothing more than sheer, unending carnage.”

“Well when you put it like that, it sounds kinda horrible, ain’t it?” She sheathed her dagger, and began walking towards me, only to be stopped by a hand the weakly grasped at her leg.

“You just don’t when to quit, do you?” she said, as she looked down upon the Silencer, who returned her gaze with one of pure, seething hatred.

The Silencer pulled herself forward, slowly, labouriously. All of us stood frozen, unable to tear our eyes away from that sorry sight. But though her guts trailed behind her, though she scraped herself on the ground so hard that bits of flesh clung to the grass behind her, though each millimetre of movement brought pain unending, still she moved forward.

“Foul… traitor… Pagan filth…” she forced each word out, her rage the only thing keeping her going. “Your deaths… My pain, my slain brethren… My Lord will repay you sevenfold.”

“You know, I’m actually impressed that you’re holding on this long. You really should stop though. That much hatred, and with that level of intensity? You might find yourself birthing a new demon.” Tabitha unsheathed her dagger once more, and pressed it unto the Silencer’s throat. “Can’t have that running rampant in the Amazon, now can we?”

“You fools have sinned against Him… His armies shall blot out the sun, and they will hunt you down before the day’s end.”

“Yeah, I’m counting on it. Why do you think I let some of your guys live?”

Wait, what?

“Your pride shall be your downfall, traitor.”

“We’ll see. Ciao!” Tabitha said, the curved hook resting on the Silencer’s neck and brutally ripped her head from her shoulders. The Silencer’s final expression was frozen on her face, and though she died in pain, I could tell from her hateful smile that she died delighted that we would soon be following her.

“What was that about El’s armies hunting us down?” I asked, staring straight at Tabitha.

“Is that gonna be your third question or-”

“Seven Hills, woman, just answer the damn question!”

“You’re no fun.” she said, and she took the Silencer’s head and shoved it inside her coat, where it disappeared. She looked at me, expecting another outburst, but that casual impossibility was less important now. Not with the grim feeling that gripped my spine with icy fingers.

“It’s exactly what you heard.” she said, even as she reached into her coat once more. “Those dudes I let go? I did that so they could tell their boss what I just did.” She pulled out a jet black rifle, easily twice the length of her arm, and by the size of its magazine and length of its barrel, it was modified to take on entire armies before being needing to be reloaded. Armies that were always at a considerable distance. Like, say, if the army was one that flew.

“After all, why stop at just a few, when I could make it literally rain blood, right?” she said.

The temperature rose by several degrees. I felt the distinct tingling of large amounts of faith being expended, and the clouds above us parted in a circle with the sun at its centre. It was like the sky had become the eye of God, and we were the focus of its baleful stare.

Then a deafening sound like thunder, and a massive crack split the heavens in two.

“Told you we didn’t have time.”