A single streak of lightning cracked across the night sky as Talim cautiously entered the dilapidated chapel her divine power had guided her to. As a priestess of the wind, it was her destiny to cleanse the world of the scourge Soul Edge had created, and her intuition told her a great evil was nearby.

"Hi~."

Talim quickly peered toward the half-collapsed roof of the sanctuary and saw the figure of a girl barely older than herself calling down to her in a rather chipper voice. The speaker's brown hair was tied in lopsided pigtails, and her lips were curled into a cheerful smile that distracted from the mischievous glare in her eyes. She was sitting with her legs swaying from a high window pane, and she was holding the Eiserne Drossel, her signature oversized chakram, under one of her gloved arms. Directly behind her were the cracked and dusty remains of what had been a beautiful stained glass window depicting a joyous angel battling a sorrowful demon.

The brunette leapt from her alcove and landed on her feet with soft grunt. She walked toward Talim with her round weapon hanging from her armored fingers as she spoke.

"It's about time you showed up."

Her mouth turned to a pouting frown.

"It's boring when I have no one to play with."

Talim slowly backed away from Tira's approach in defense. Her unclasped Syi Salika and Loka Luha, her twin bladed tonfa, from the ribbons of her belt and raised her arms into a brawling stance. The brown leather of her fingerless gloves wrapped tightly around the hilts of the two weapons as she forcefully replied.

"Tira, you know why I'm here! I can't let you carry out Soul Edge's will any longer!"

Tira stopped in place and allowed the edge of her ring blade to rest against the stone floor of the chapel.

"Aww, and here I was going to ask you if you had any interest in joining him willingly."

Talim responded to her adversary with a rageful glare.

"I'd never!"

Tira only sighed and shook her head.

"Figures. You've always been the goodie two-shoes type, Talim."

The same playful grin as before suddenly reappeared on her soft face. Tira's free hand then clenched into a fist before she extended it toward Talim.

"He was expecting you to say that, and he gave me this in case you declined the offer."

Tira's steel palm opened, revealing a small, glowing, knife-shaped shard of the mythical Soul Edge. Talim gasped briefly at this sight, but she quickly reasserted herself and spoke in a determined voice.

"Give that to me, Tira! I have to destroy it!"

The pigtailed assassin carefully placed the shard into a pocket in her loose-fitting red combat dress before she teased opponent.

"Oh, don't worry. I'll give it to you eventually, but probably not in a way you're going to like."

Talim's eyes narrowed.

"If you get in my way, I'll have to kill you."

Tira's expression brightened with excitement at Talim's threatening words. She lifted the Eiserne Drossel in a fighting stance of her own before replying cheerfully.

"Sounds fun!"

Having heard enough, Talim suddenly lunged forward and stabbed with the tip of one tonfa in a punching motion. Tira quickly responded by flipping backwards to dodge Talim's attack. The wind dancer continued to push forward and aggressively slash at her opponent with alternating strikes, but Tira tactfully blocked each attack with the edge of her chakram.

After the sound of steel colliding with steel echoed off of the crumbling chapel walls several times, Tira took the offensive by interrupting Talim's advances with a strong kick to the gut and leaping to the side to put substantial distance between the two teenage warriors. As Talim recovered and held her bare, tanned waist in pain, Tira used her weapon as an improvised boomerang and threw it in an angry, impulsive attempt to cut her enemy in two. Talim's reflexes allowed her to quickly dodge the deadly attack by rolling underneath its flight path, and Tira growled slightly in anger when the weapon returned to its master's hands after cutting through nothing but air.

Tira then unexpectedly dashed forward to close the distance between herself and Talim. Talim raised her weapons defensively and, just as she reached melee range, Tira sporadically jumped into the air and somersaulted over her enemy. Talim turned her head to carefully track Tira's movements, but her concentration was broken when she suddenly cried out in pain and staggered forward. While in midair, Tira had withdrawn the cursed Soul Edge fragment from her attire and stabbed at her unsuspecting target. When Tira's feet hit the ground, the pointed shard easily punctured Talim's silky green vest and pierced the back of her left shoulder.

Talim's weapons slipped from her hands and clattered to the ground as the young priestess suddenly found herself virtually paralyzed by pain. She collapsed to her knees, then slowly looked over her shoulder toward Tira as she winced. Tira giggled softly and let the Eiserne Drossel rest at her side again before she spoke.

"Looks like I win."

Talim grit her teeth in contempt at Tira's words. She then reached behind her neck with her right hand to remove the pulsating shard, but she quickly found herself in even more agony as touching the fragment sent pain shooting into her fingertips and through her right arm. The demonic weapon was protecting its hold over her, and it wouldn't allow itself to be removed until it had injected its full dose of poison into its victim.

Tira watched in curiosity as her defeated opponent was slowly overtaken by her master's power. Talim suddenly raised her empty hands to the sides of her head and began groaning as she heard what seemed like thousands of ghostly voices echo through her mind and attempt to seduce her. The sinister chorus then began violating her mind, reading her most private thoughts and memories and drowning them in demands for mindless servitude. Her entire life was an open book, and the invading force was ripping out any pages that didn't satisfy its agenda. Talim soon began vigorously shaking her head, causing her braided green hair and the golden hassles on her shaman headdress to bob about as she struggled against the dark power.

"No... No! I won't do it! It's wrong!"

The veins in Talim's arm closest to the wound suddenly turned black with evil energy, and soon the upper portion of her left shoulder sported a mark that roughly resembled a spider web tattoo. All of her strengths as a nimble fighter now become her greatest weakness, as her small, lean frame allowed the Soul Edge's power to surge through her body with little resistance. As the weapon slowly polluted her heart with its malice, Talim's struggles subsided. She remained in a kneeling position as her head hung downward and her arms dropped limply at her sides.

After Talim sat silently in this position for some time, Tira hoisted her chakram onto her shoulder and walked in front of her fallen adversary. When she spoke, Talim continued to kneel motionlessly at her feet.

"Hey, are you okay? You're no use to him dead."

Tira suddenly stepped back with a slight start when Talim abruptly raised her head and her eyelids fluttered open in full alert. Talim's eyes were now bloodshot, and a purple aura lit her normally brown irises. She then carefully reached toward her left shoulder again, quietly purring as she withdrew the bloodied shard of the Soul Edge fragment from her flesh and placed it in her belt. She seemed to enjoy the pain, and the blackened marks on her shoulder remained visible as if to brand her. When she lifted Syi Salika and Loka Luha from the ground, the blessed tonfa suddenly warped their appearance into a pair of dark, leathery claws that pulsated with life in their master's hands. Talim rose to her sandal-clad feet with her new equipment and peered toward Tira with a demented grin.

"So, you must be his old toy."

Tira raised her right eyebrow in slight puzzlement before responding.

"What exactly do you mean by 'old toy'?"

Talim's crazed smile grew wider as her voice took on a more sinister tone.

"Can't you hear Soul Edge's voice, Tira? He's saying you're nothing but a broken doll to him. He's tired of your antics, and he's asking me to be his new pet."

She lifted her twin blades into a fighting stance before she continued to taunt Tira.

"He never wanted me to join you. He wants me to replace you."

Tira's confused expression instantly turned to one of rage as Talim taunted her. She raised her ringed weapon back into a fighting stance as she partially muttered her next words back to Talim.

"After everything I've done for that bastard... I guess I'll have to mess up his plans."

Talim answered the youthful assassin's challenge by suddenly slashing with one of her demonic weapons. When Tira attempted to block with the Eiserne Drossel this time, Talim's new strength allowed the her to slice the ringed weapon clean into two with her living tonfa. Tira briefly gasped in shock as the two pieces of the chakram fell to the ground, then shook her head to rid herself of her worries before speaking again.

"Then I'll just kill you with this!"

Tira spread her arms and leapt forward to capture Talim in a tight hug. She then quickly closed her eyes and roughly pushed her lips toward Talim's. This bizarre ritual was sure to seal the corrupted priestess's fate, as it allowed Tira to use her own unholy power to absorb the life of her victim. Strangely, however, Tira didn't feel the soul of a young woman screaming in horror as it was helplessly pulled from its body as she expected. She only felt emptiness within Talim, as if the girl she was embracing was only a spiritless shell of who she had been moments earlier.

When Tira's eyes opened again, they only met the crazed glare of Talim's, which were now as lively as ever. Tira stepped back in disbelief.

"How... How the Hell did you...?"

Talim replied by lowering her head to feign shyness.

"Oh, Tira... I didn't know you felt that way about me..."

When she raised her head to speak again, her sinister grin returned.

"Too bad you still have to die."

Talim suddenly slashed again with one tonfa, and Tira desperately raised her left arm to block the attack with her steel gauntlet. The weapon's claw cut through the armor plating with little effort and swiftly severed Tira's forearm. As Tira instantly grabbed her bleeding stump and howled in agony, Talim took one final slash toward her opponent's unshielded neck. The tip of the demonic weapon left a deep slit across Tira's throat, and brown-haired fighter's screams abruptly fell silent as she lifelessly crumpled to the ground.

With her initiation complete, Talim casually reattached her weapons to her belt. After standing in eerie silence for a few moments, she suddenly raised her head to answer her new calling. This process felt similar to the vague memories she still had of serving as a priestess for the wind tribe she was raised by, but now she was carrying out the will of a different deity. She appeared to speak to herself as her rabid eyes looked through a large hole in the chapel ceiling and toward the black, stormy sky.

"Of course, Master. I'll pry it out of Algol's dead hands if I have to."

Talim's head lowered after she said this. When she turned to exit the ruined sanctuary, her eyes briefly peered toward Tira's mutilated corpse. This gruesome sight brought a tickled feeling to Talim's broken mind and caused her to begin giggling. Her gleeful bursts quickly became more frantic and hysterical, and the once holy ruins were soon filled with the echoes of a young girl's shrill, psychotic laughter.