When they stepped out of the portal, Yami heard Finral gasp. His own heart sank as he looked at the building which had once housed the Blue Rose squad. Or at least as he looked where it should have been. What stood in its stead was a massive thicket of thorns, the likes of which he had only seen once before. Then, he had been able to stop its growth before it walled off the city. This time, however, he saw no obvious path through.

"Oh, Charlotte. What have you done?" he muttered to himself as he drew his blade. He wished he had had the foresight to get an actual machete as he hacked through the brambles with his katana. But he had gone off half-cocked like usual, too worried to think things through.

Time seemed to crawl to a stop as he and Finral made their way, inch by inch, through the thicket. He didn't know exactly where he was going. He only knew she was in there somewhere. He could sense a large mana pool from deep within, not unlike the first time he had faced such a mass of thorns. Only this time, the power emanating from the center of the building was like nothing he had ever felt from her before.

And he knew it was her.

He couldn't explain how he knew, but he was certain down to the smallest fiber of his being she was the source of the mana he felt.

With every advancement they made into the thicket, Yami could feel the path closing behind them. She was either trapping them, or the vines had grown a mind of their own.

He couldn't think about that now; he had to get to her. He continued slicing through the thorns and pushing their way further into the base-through the wall and into the courtyard

"Sorry I'm not much help boss." Finral said as he pushed a thick thorny vine out of his way. It sprang back as soon as he released it.

Yami grunted as he continued to carve a path for them.

"You think you could go back and find someone who could help? Magna maybe?"

"I could try, but the trip here really drained me. I'm pretty sure I can get us out, but I don't know if I have three trips in me."

He hacked and hacked some more, cursing the briars. The damned things were formed from mana, called forth by her magic like Noelle called for water, or Luck called lightning. Despite their origin, though, they were real enough, thick enough to be a pain in the ass.

"Guess we're on our own then." He complained as he continued his way into the building.

After an eternity, Yami broke through the outer shell, having made a hole through the outer wall and into the gardens. He could see the stair leading up to the building's entrance as the thicket seemed to thin just a bit, letting more light through. The work was hard, though, and he was exhausted-drained physically and magically. He could sense she was still there, and hoped she would listen to reason when he got there. He hoped, for all their sake. He didn't know if he would have a fight in him after battling her thorns to get to her, and he sure as hell didn't know if he could fight her.

"What's that?" Finral asked as they walked up to the steps. The pale golden color of the sandstone blocks which had been used to build the structure had turned pink in places, red in others. Some spots still glistened with wetness.

"Blood." Yami wrinkled his nose as he searched the vines above and around them. Bodies dangled from the thorny vines like strange fruit. He swallowed hard as he scanned the corpses. Drops of fresh blood splattered on the steps before them.

Finral followed his captain's gaze and made a retching sound.

"There's dead people..."

"Blue Rose members." Yami focused once more on the door. He tread carefully up the blood-soaked steps. Nothing he could do for them now. He took a deep breath, smoke billowing out on the exhale. From the sound in the woman's voice in the distress signal, Yami had expected what they had found. He had seen the effects of her magic on the field of battle before. He knew what he would see. He was not prepared for the gut-wrenching feeling of seeing the vines filled with compatriots.

"How can you tell?" FInral hesitated to follow, but eventually skirted the most slick parts of the stairs as he decided he would rather be with Yami than surrounded by so much death.

Yami pointed up at one of them.

"She's still wearing her robe." The blue cloak fluttered in the slight breeze as if to emphasize his point.

"And you think Lady Charlotte could have done this?"

"She's the only one who could have." He looked more closely at the thorny vines wrapping the walls as they entered the main building. The seemed to writhe like snakes, ever reaching for the sun. Blooms of roses adorned them, as always, a deceptive beauty hiding the danger beneath, but the flowers seemed to have an identity crisis. The sky blue blossoms he knew were interspersed with flowers both blood red and a strange violet color. He touched one of the blue blooms; it was soft to the touch and a brilliant as her eyes. He took a deep breath and renewed his effort, cutting through the twisting vines threatening to entrap them.

"I've never seen so many colors on one plant before." Finral noted as he followed.

Yami stopped mid-swing and looked at the briars surrounding the walls. He raised his hand signalling for Finral to stop talking.

"Finral, do you feel that?" He asked after a moment.

"Feel what? I don't..." Finral followed his gaze to the wall of briars, which had stopped moving and growing. "I don't feel anything."

"Exactly. I was tracking a large mana pool up ahead. Now there's nothing. And the briars have stopped growing. She left."

Finral shivered.

"She killed them all, and she left." Yami wanted to vomit. He had never known Charlotte to be so ruthless, so vindictive. She may be aloof to most people, dismissive of men and a force to reckon with on the battle field, but she was nothing if not controlled, calm, and collected. Far more often than not, she had been the voice of reason among the captains, her and Fuegoleon. He could not imagine anything able to alter her so drastically she would turn on her own squad. She must be under the influence of the magic those terrorists unleashed. He had no other explanation.

They heard a noise through the thorns and turned to it simultaneously.

"Was that someone crying?" Finral asked, his hackles raised and body tense. The young man had the skittishness of a scared cat, Yami thought as he glanced back at him. Yami turned to the path the sound seemed to emanate from and crept toward it.

As he hacked back some of the thorny vines crossing their paths-the thicket was less matted inside the building, Finral rambled.

"That large mana concentration is gone, but I can feel... something down here. Man, I wish Luck were here..."

Yami tuned him out as he moved more quickly through the hallway. Since Charlotte had left, and the vines had stopped writhing with life, he no longer feared being attacked directly, or having their path suddenly cut off. He followed the faint trace of mana as he wove through the labyrinthine halls until he stopped short. Finral, who had been struggling to keep up, tripped over a thick vine and fell forward.

"Ow!" Finral cried as he landed heavily on the floor, unable to stop his forward momentum as Yami stepped to the side.

"It's gone."

"What?"

"The mana thread. It's gone." Yami's voice was somber. He didn't want to say it, but Finral looked at him without understanding. "Finral, take us back to the capital."

"But there might be survivors still." Finral argued, but he finally figured out the look on Yami's face and realized how hopeless a search would be. "Right." Finral stood and prepared the portal. Yami looked around at the roses blooming on the vines around them. He could not see a single blue one anywhere.

"Come on, Boss." Finral's voice broke his contemplation of the flowers. Yami could see the strain on the younger man's face and he hurried through the portal to the capital.

When they stepped foot into the city proper, Yami thought things had somehow gotten worse.

"What the hell is Nozel doing?" Yami looked around at a city in chaos. "Finral, can you get me up there?" He pointed to the roof of a building-a tall spire-some distance from their location. He knew Finral would normally have no trouble with the distance, but the spatial mage was still recovering, and he feared he may have pushed his abilities to the limit already.

Well, if he had, Yami thought, he would have to break through them, or else he would die in the fight.

Finral squinted at the spire in the distance.

"Yeah. Sure." He opened the portal. Yami clapped him on the back. The young man had grown a great deal in the last few months, Yami thought proudly.

"Go, do what you can to get the people to safety." Yami ordered before jumping into the void and landing on the top of a tall steeple of a chapel. His feet slipped beneath him until he found purchase on the steep roof.

The city was a mess. All over, buildings were burning or collapsed as magic flashed between combatants. He tried to block out the screams of panic. He would have to leave the scared and the helpless to others. He prayed there were others to take care of them.

He had bigger prey.

He scanned the scenes below looking for any sign of her magic.

There.

He spotted her briars rising from the ground, shredding buildings and bodies in one strike. He had never seen her so strong and so indifferent before. He launched himself in her general direction, praying his magic would hold out as he reinforced his natural athleticism to avoid injury. A pair of knights blocked his path-purple and coral, abandoning easier prey for him. Their magic lashed out at him and he drew his blade as he ran, slashing through the air, absorbing the spells launched at him and then knocking them out from behind. The kids they had been attacking before he drew their attention scurried off, disappearing into a building, and hopefully safety.

His defeat of the two other transformed knights had caught her attention. She turned to him, helmet-less, strange markings on her cheeks, her ears pointed now as the others had been.

"I see those two were worthless." Her eyes drifted to the two knights behind him. Her eyes held no recognition of him and he felt his bottom lip quiver before he clenched his jaw. He did not believe she was gone; he could not believe it.

"Give her back." his voice was low, dangerously soft. He shifted the blade in his hand.

"What?" The Charlotte that was not Charlotte chuckled, her lips turning up in a smirk.

"Give her back." He said with more force. He prepared his spells as he adjusted his stance. He did not want to hurt her, he could not hurt her. The risk was too great. But he had to stop her. He had to try.

"You seem to think I care about what you want, pathetic human. I will take vengeance for what your kind has done. And I will start with you."

"Give. Her. Back." He locked eyes with hers. They were still a blue as the sky, but they were giving him neither the icy glares he had grown so used to, nor the passionate glances he had only begun to explore. She stared him down with a strange sense of curiosity.

"Oh. I see." A wicked grin spread across her face, a hand rubbed over her belly. "You must be the father."

He froze to the spot, ready to strike, but unable to move. Her words had paralyzed him and he glared at her like a caged animal.

She must have sensed his hesitation as she sauntered toward him.

He had tried to keep the child she carried from his mind since the distress call came in from her squad. But he had not been able to keep the underlying worry from permeating his being. He had worried she had died in the attack, taking their child with her, and now he worried more that the monster before him would do something to harm her and the child.

He had never meant to grow so attached to someone he had never met, but in the weeks since she had told him, he had grown used to the idea. He even felt excited from time to time, and had permitted himself the small luxury of imagining them all together as a happy family. Perhaps, he thought, it was one luxury too many.

"I had thought about cutting your child from my belly when I woke, when I realized I was growing such a useless creature inside me. But there was too much to do first."

He saw her thorny vines creeping toward him, their large blood colored buds opening to full bloom.

"Plenty of time before the whelp would be born to end it after we eradicated you deplorable lot."

Closer she came.

Closer the vines crept.

The more rooted he felt. His hands were tied, his actions limited. He could not hurt her, could not strike like the last two. He could not risk it.

The more trapped she thought he was.

"But now. Now I think I will make you watch." Her briars rocketed toward him. He triggered his spell, swallowing the vines as they reached out for him in a series of black holes surrounding him.

"GIVE HER BACK TO ME!" He yelled, slashing at the ground at her feet, his dark magic breaking the cobblestone. She stumbled backward from the force. When she looked at him again, Yami saw a flicker of recognition before it disappeared behind an angry glare. Gone was the curiosity in her eyes. The monster controlling her looked at him with only hatred.

"No." She spat, as she sent her vines flying once more.

He sprang from his spot, pouncing like a cat finally attacking the prey it had been stalking. He sliced at the thorns she had sent after him, keeping his path unobstructed until he tackled her to the ground. Contain, control, disable, echoed through his head-old lessons from Julius on how one should approach any battle to minimize casualties.

Her briars moved quickly, far faster than he had remembered, reaching out for them both as her head slammed into the street beneath her. She seemed dazed by the impact, but only briefly as she once more looked up at him with fury, rage, and hatred.

"You'll have to do better than that."

Her briars grabbed him and pulled him from her.

Shit, he thought, realizing he had let his guard down. The thorns twisted into his skin, boring through his flesh as they suspended him in the air. He could barely touch the ground with the tips of his feet. Not enough to gain momentum for anything.

He was angry, furious with himself for not watching his back better.

"You were so focused on not hurting me that you let yourself get caught. Stupid human." She pulled herself up from the ground. Blood streaked her blond hair and trickled down her cheek. Her vines tightened around his body. He wanted to scream from the pain. He wanted to cry, to pass out. But he would not give her the satisfaction.

She walked up to him, a scant distance between them.

"Perhaps I should just do it now, kill you, and get this all over with."

He tried to struggle against his bindings. Her response was to tighten them more.

"You know, my aloof thorn princess, I just see this as a little foreplay." He struggled again, they tightened in response. He could feel the pressure of them on his chest, making his breath come short and ragged.

A slight flicker of recognition in her eyes. And he knew she was still in there.

"Then you are more deranged than I thought."

"You should..." He gasped for air as the vines continued to squeeze and cut into him. "You should let me show you how deranged I can be. Charlotte's always liked it a little rough."

An uncontrollable blush on her cheeks. She hated it when he would be so blunt, especially in public. Always said it embarrassed her. She stammered, much like Charlotte had in the cave when he had first asked her so crudely if she wanted to fuck.

He leaned forward and kissed her. The movement made the pain excruciating as the thorns tore his skin. He could barely brush her lips, but when he opened his eyes, her eyes were still closed, her face peaceful, as she was when she slept. The markings on her face had faded, not completely, but enough to make him think he was breaking through to her.

And she kissed him. She kissed him with passion, desperation, and fear. She caressed his face with her hands, pressed her forehead against his.

"Yami?" Her voice was tiny, soft, scared.

"What have I told you, Charlotte?" The vines loosened enough for him to breath, to move. He broke one hand free enough to brush her cheek. She chuckled and smiled despite the tears streaming down her face.

"I know; I know." She smiled at him.

"I love you, Charlotte."

Her eyes grew wide at the admission, and then they narrowed and her face grew hard.

Yami gasped. Pain blossomed in his gut. Looking down he saw a thick thorny vine connecting him to her hand. He looked back to her hard eyes-the eyes of the woman who was not Charlotte. She smirked.

"Humans know nothing of love, of attachment. You could never know the joy of such community, the peace your kind tore asunder."

He coughed and tasted blood.

"You're wrong." His vision started to blur. "Charlotte... I..."

He lost consciousness.

A/N: Another cliffhanger... sorry. (not really)

Will be working on the next chapter over the course of the week and probably posting it next Sunday.

School will be back in session soon, so I'm moving to a more defined posting schedule to accommodate all the other "real" work I have to do as well. Will post the tentative schedule on my profile once I figure it out.