(AN: When I originally wrote in those two supporting characters, I had originally intended that the ritual to summon the Azure Knight would require a blood sacrifice and that the rat's blood wouldn't work, so Ivy would be forced to sacrifice one of them. But it would seem wrong since Peter has unrequited feelings for her and she would be manipulating those feelings to use him for the sacrifice. I don't know, I was going for that strongly, since it would show just how determined Ivy is, but then I figured that it just didn't feel right. Don't worry, I might have something happen later on down the line.)

(Oh, by the way, I just gotta say this. I grew up with SCII and while I liked most of the next installments [the least being, of course, SCV], some of the voice actors from SCII were the best. Among them were the Azure Knight, Mitsurugi [who's got to have a cameo in this story, he always does in my SC fics, it's a rule - lol, then if I feel like writing his story, it's going to have EVERYONE in it], Cervantes and especially Astaroth. Some voices, however, were a bit wooden in it [like Sophitia, Kilik and Ivy, imo], and they did get better, so over all, yeah. If you don't like Lani Minella [Ivy's voice actress from SCIII onward] or Jay S. Gilbert [Astaroth from SCII], you can imagine them sounding however you like as you read this.)

(Yay for the imagination! New chapter!)


Denizens of Darkness

As you read these words, doubtless you will criticize what I did over the next several weeks. I don't need to explain myself to you or to anyone, for what I did I am answerable to no one. However, lest you think that I was foolish and easily manipulated, I must needs set the record straight. My overwhelming desire was to avenge the loss of my Father, and the Azure Knight, my new lord, had given life to the sword that had guided and protected me throughout my journey.

But there was something else. After I was formally sworn into the service of the Azure Knight, he summoned us to a separate room, where he told us where we would stay in the castle. I was given the old chapel on the north-west island. While we were dispersing to our assigned places, I remained behind to voice my fears before the Azure Knight. However, as I stood before the seemingly imposing figure, I found myself unable to speak my full mind, and concluded by asking a few particulars about the summoning ritual.

"I told you before," he replied angrily. "We are summoning souls to this hallowed ground."

"But why?" I asked, ignoring that I was speaking to the one who gave my sword life and therefore the only one who deserved my respect.

He breathed off his anger, then replied with five words that changed how I felt about him: To bring back the dead. When I heard those words, I felt at once relieved and disturbed. While I had delved deep into the dark arts, necromancy was still something with which I was unfamiliar. Such was the reason for my fear, yet why would I have hope at this news? Those words, or perhaps his choice of words, mirrored how I had summoned him. To bring back the dead was very near to the words of the spell: To Call the Lost Forward. My heart stopped and I gasped for breath. Could it be possible that I would not have to destroy the sword after all? Could I not instead ally myself to my new lord and, through helping him, bring back my Father?

Apparently, the Azure Knight noticed my bemused demeanor. "What is wrong, Ivy?"

"Nothing, my lord," I replied. "It's just, well, I have another obligation...but, I believe, it will not hinder my loyalty to you."

"It won't," the Azure Knight stated. "Or you will die for it."

I agreed to this, for I knew how to behave before my superiors. I had no reason to mistrust him, no cause for doubt as of yet. If he wished to exercise his lordly authority, that was his prerogative and who was I to argue? I did feel, however, that I deserved to tell him my full purpose. His sword had been nothing but helpful to me on my journey, I felt obliged to be completely honest and truthful with him. I told him of my quest and of the fall of my family in brief, and that I sought Soul Edge, the Sword of Heroes, for to destroy it. When I had finished talking, he seemed rather pensive for long moment.

At last he broke the silence with a question. "Have you ever seen Soul Edge?"

"No, my lord, I have not." quoth I.

The Azure Knight grunted, then turned to leave the meeting room. Before he left, he halted and spoke these last words of parting to me: "All shall be well in the end, Ivy. I promise you."

"Please, my lord, call me Isabella."

An imperceptible nod came from the direction of the Azure Knight, who then walked back to his quarters, leaving me to meander alone to the chapel. Then it dawned in my mind that the large one, Astaroth, might be of some use to me. With my sword in hand and after checking the map, I made my way to the dungeons, eager to end this business with the beast. He didn't seem to like people, much less myself. But while I walked down the halls to the dungeon, I thought back on the Azure Knight. He seemed the most human of these inhuman creatures, and what was more, I could distinctly tell that he seemed more open to my company. For some reason I gave him my true name.

Down in the dungeons, in the darkest, foulest place of the castle, I found the black giant, wielding his mighty ax and clad in nothing more than boots upon his feet, a thong about his loins and a muzzle over his mouth. I immediately felt that my harness protected my modest better than this beast. I also wondered if he were just a beast as he seemed, or if there was within his mind any desire to be greater than what he was.

"Oi! Golem!" I shouted at him.

"What?" he growled back angrily.

"I need your help," I said, but knew immediately that I had spoken wrong.

"Begone, you scum!" he retorted.

I drew out my sword and cracked it like a whip over his head, then walked out towards him, trying my best to appear aloof, intimidating and haughty before this disgusting mass of muscle.

"I can command this sword to cut you to pieces faster than you could swing that ax at me," I said, looking at the huge weapon in his hand. It was like something of biblical proportions, that weapon, its head the length of my leg from the hip down and the staff at least six feet tall or more.

"What do you want, b*tch?" the golem growled at me. I should have been insulted, but at least he was being pliable. I would have to take the insults if I wanted his help, because I could see in his blank, colorless eyes a smoldering hatred for all things human, or of anyone or anything that tried to dominate him. He could easily become a liability, and I knew that his only lord was the Azure Knight.

"I left many of my things in my carriage on the edge of the valley," I said. "I want you to bring them to the chapel for me."

"I am no slave!"

"Do it, or we'll see just how useful the Azure Knight finds you without your arms or legs," I threatened, flashing the beast a cheeky smile. If he believed that I cared little for his life, he would perhaps be more apt to obeying my wishes.

And he did. While I walked back to the chapel, waiting for Astaroth's return, I wondered, as I had before, if this beast was indeed truly living and conscious. At once it seemed outrageous and even despicable to entertain the thought, yet as I examined his behavior, I knew that, though he cared for no one or nothing, it mattered to him if he lived or not. Perhaps there was something within him that was not fully constructed, that was more than a dumb brute. But I reasoned that it was not worth trying to reveal. This beast had a violent temper and trying to reason with it seemed to be asking for him to take that ax to me. It didn't matter, for the Azure Knight needed him and that was enough for me.


Over the weeks that followed, we met every night in the courtyard of the castle. Astaroth and Aeon Calcos would bring dead bodies into the courtyard and the Azure Knight would lead me in the ritual of summoning the souls. The spells I chanted were strange ones, in tongues I had never heard of before: I could feel the magic about this place, and it made my skin crawl. Nevertheless, the lord assured me that all would be well in the end. It would be worth it, to see my Father again.

During the day, I kept to myself in the chapel. Its roof had collapsed and a huge portion of the chapel proper had fallen into the river, but it was in decent repair. The rectory, which was beneath the chapel proper, I turned into my bedroom and laboratory. I read my books and delved into dark, terrible things, which would have made the former owners of this chapel cringe and hold their crucifixes in fear. It mattered not to me. The keep belonged to the Azure Knight, and part of me did not wish to live in a place that was being befouled nightly by corpses.

I could have realized that something more was going on, yet I had intentionally sealed my mind to any fears or suspicions. It would all be worth it in the end, I told myself, and believed it as well. That was all.

But to say that, because I had no suspicions of what we did here, I became as debased as Astaroth would be quite the lie. I was still human, and the weather of this castle, Ostrheinsburg, was starting to take its toll. Weeks in darkness made me sensitive to light, and nightly rituals among the dead made me stink all the more. I determined that I would have to bathe, and soon. I had become attached to bathing and could now feel when I had not done so, and it was not pleasant at all.

So it was that, one day, I paused from my work and walked up the stone staircase to the chapel. Carefully I made my way down to the foot of the isle, where the river Danube - as I learned it was through map-reading while here - flowed about the isles on which Ostrheinsburg had been built. As I began to unbuckle the straps of my harness, I thought I heard a stone fall into the water nearby. I pulled my sword out of the sheath I made for it on my thigh and pointed it about me.

"Come out, now," I ordered. "You can't hide from me now."

I heard a sound like the hissing of a snake, and then there appeared from out of a clump of bushes the Lizardman, Aeon Calcos. I smirked cheekily at him.

"Watching me bathe, were you?" I taunted. "I thought you of all people would know the consequences of happening upon a woman while she bathes."

The beast growled, then gestured with one of his talons towards the keep upon the larger island. He then walked bow-legged towards the edge of the water and leaped in. His head popped out of the water and he waved at me, gesturing as though I should follow him. I laughed.

"No thank you," I retorted. "I'll walk, if it's all the same to you."

The Lizardman made a cooing sound that would have seemed like pouting from anyone else, but did not insist. It knew as well as I did that if I swam as he had suggested, I would have to leave my harness behind: no sense ruining it in the river. While I didn't exactly have any qualms about modesty, I wasn't in the market for losing my maidenhead to a dragon-man. Beast though he might have been, he was still once a man, as the Azure Knight had told me.

I took the bridge to the main island, then walked down to the edge of the island, where the Lizardman had appeared. With him were several others like him, but as different as one human to another (though I think that Astaroth could not tell one human from another). I looked at him with a quizzical expression, and saw him gesture to a tunnel in the side of the wall.

"You want me to go in there?" I asked, raising a single eyebrow in a quizzical expression of disbelief. Aeon, the lead Lizardman, nodded. "Fine, but if you or your lackeys try anything, I can command my sword to emasculate you all in a quick, single blow."

The Lizardmen took a step back, hissing or barring their fangs at me. I cared not. Let them hate me, as long as they feared me. Aeon led the way into the tunnel, and I followed after him. The tunnel was low-hanging, so I had to bend over, which was hardly enjoyable for me, what with my heavy chest hanging down and my rear exposed to these fiendish lizards. Half-way through, I turned back and drew my sword, to make them know that I was not available. They seemed to have taken my threats to heart.

At the end of the tunnel was a storeroom that had long since been looted and plundered. Most of the barrels had been shattered and lay about in pieces, but one huge one, at least seven feet deep and five feet wide, lay intact against the side of the wall. It must have been used for beer, from the smell of it, but it had long since been emptied. Looking at it, I deemed that it could possibly be used to make a bathtub. It was at that moment that I quietly thanked Aeon Calcos for sneaking up on me as he had. I no longer felt safe bathing in the Danube with his lizardmen swimming about in it, so I decided to find an abandoned room later and use it for my bathing needs.


(AN: I know Astaroth and Aeon are like Frankenstein's monster and a walking Greek tragedy, I purposefully had Ivy feel detached from them, which will bring her closer to the Azure Knight. It's important.)

(Next chapter is gonna have something rather interesting, so please don't leave [and please review. Don't forbear because I ask you to, I enjoy hearing your reviews. It keeps me going, so don't stop])