The Melancholic Path

by Strandenstein

Subaru meets a particularly Melancholic Man during his last failed attempt to reach the mansion and decides to form a contract for their mutual benefit. However upon returning by death to the market with Rem, Subaru questions why he would even bother to save everyone after what they put him through.

8. The End of the Beginning

"AL GOA!" Screamed Roswaal as a giant ball of fire conjured out of thin air above the carriage and flew towards the whale, the ball which was easily the size of the whale's head radiated with energy. As it flew it managed to scorch the ground below it, even though the fire ball was separated from the ground by a gap at least the size of Roswaal himself.

It slammed into the whale at a velocity near incomprehensible to a normal person, bursting and losing shape as the flames quickly wrapped their way around the entirety of the whale. But with a roar that would drive true fear into the heart of even the most seasoned warrior these mighty flames dissipated into nothing more then trails of smoke and steam as the near unscathed Great Mabeast rocketed forth, barreling towards the carriage with vigour and primal hunger in its eye.

The whale dove towards the carriage with a grace that could be compared to that of an angel descending from the heavens, however an angel with an alignment fitting that of a servant of hell. The last rays of the setting sun catching its large body and casting a dark shadow that was both long and wide, engulfing its prey in a blackness that was comparable to the early hours of night.

It screamed its brain shaking cry, and with its cry came forth a torrent of thick grey fog, a large billowing stream that threatened to swallow the dragon carriage and its occupants whole.

"EL FULA!" Shouted Ram, her right arm extended with wand drawn and pointing straight at the cloud of fog, her left arm clasped tightly to the inside of the carriage as she hung out the open door as a series of large win blades rocketed forth to meet the fog with enough power to mortally wound nearly any living being.

Although her magic was formidable, it did not match the power of the White Whale, it could not completely stop the fog that devoured people from the memories of the world's living. But it did provide them the briefest of respites, delaying their end by fractions of a second, but fractions were all that were needed.

"Ul Fula" Chanted a defiant voice as the air around the carriage adopted a stance in sync with the caster, the caster who was regarded as the greatest living magician. The air around the carriage instantly morphed into large and curved blades the size of a large man before rocketing out in nearly all directions where they scattered the fog.

Although the fog still cloaked their surroundings and obstructed their view, its concentration had been reduced significantly, meaning that the erasure of the carriage's occupants had been delayed for the time being.

This was enough for Roswaal L Mathers as he stood on the roof of the dragon carriage as it rocketed off road across the plains near Flügel's Tree, without the normal divine protection offered by the ground dragon. This feat of his was only possible due to an immense display of magical strength, wind magic diverting most of the air around him in order to lower his drag, yang magic acting between his feet and the roof of the carriage that made them behave as one object and anchor him in place.

His face held a serious grimace as he faced his opponent, the White Whale, a face that was serious because he understood that he stood little hope of winning this fight. Had it been the Great Rabbit instead of the whale he would have been able to win within seconds, a single spell of his could wipe it off the face of the earth. Had it been the Black Serpent he would have easily won if he initiated the fight, should he be caught off guard then it would become a battle of reaction speeds, which would have been a battle that was still winnable.

But the White Whale, the cursed spawn of Gluttony was the worst possible opponent for him, it was near immune to magic as its tough hide naturally dissipated mana that made contact with it, leaving him capable of little more then annoying it.

But there was a reason he stood atop the carriage with such confidence, it was not like he had spent the last 400 years without giving a single thought to what he would do should he run into the White Whale while passing through its hunting grounds near Flügel's Tree. There existed a place deep within a forest on the edge of the plains that was held something that the White Whale would dare not approach, for its limited intelligence was strong enough to know that something lay dormant there that it should not trifle with.

Although if he took them to the Sanctuary it would mean that Emilia would end up being trapped with little likelihood of freeing herself, such a thing was of little consequence to him, she would either overcome the trials and become useful once again, or live out her days within the barrier as a failed experiment of his, for which the Sanctuary would be a fitting dumping ground.

"Rem, make a one-eighth turn to the left then head straight into the forest" Roswaal had to raise his voice to say this, not out of urgency but out of necessity, to be heard over the sound of rushing wind and the whales' screams was in itself a difficult task.

And so as he stood atop the carriage, the wind blowing his blue hair so that it pointed straight out from his face, towards the direction he faced, away from where the carriage was travelling. Its at this point that the fog burst apart before his eyes and the White Whale dove towards the carriage, its maw agape as it readied itself swallow the carriage along with its occupants.

But Margrave Roswaal L Mathers was confident, and it was not misplaced whatsoever, he did not need to say the words for the spell's complexity was trivial to him, after 400 years this spell came to him as easily as breathing. And so with as little effort as it took to breath, a massive rock pillar grew out of the ground and rocketed into the whales jaw, catching it in the final seconds of its dive and throwing it off course so that it slammed into the ground mere paces from the carriage, sadly having sustained only the most minor of injuries.

But the Disciple of the Witch of Greed caught movement out of the corner of his eye, a second whale, without moving his feet from where they were anchored he raised his left hand as three giant spears of ice formed and launched towards the whale with such force that the whale was launched back into the fog. Invoking the power brough by the word of Al without even uttering its name was something he had mastered centuries ago.

As he heard Ram invoke highest tier of wind magic to launch a strike capable of diverting the attack of another of the whales, Roswaal spun around to face the direction that the carriage travelled, to face towards the Sanctuary, the place where his current mission had begun so long ago.

His once neat hair was in complete disarray from the wind, he was in the midst of a battle with one of the Three Great Mabeasts, and the Warlock of Melancholy had once again taken the mantle of his opposition. His situation could be considered hopeless, untenable, pure chaos, but the Margrave tilted his head to the sky and smiled, he extended his arms outward to his sides, spread his fingers to catch as much wind as possible.

This was excitement, true exhilaration, after 400 years he had arrived at what was to be the final act of his grand plan that he had been orchestrating for the last 4 centuries, the coming few days would decide if Echidna, The Witch of Greed would once again walk the world alongside the living. Roswaal L Mathers, or more correctly, Roswaal A Mathers was determined to ensure that this happened, no matter the cost.

---

As 3 of the 4 members of the Emilia camp were fully occupied with the battle that raged just outside the carriage, its last member and leader in name only knelt on the floor inside. She knelt inside and clutched a green crystal to her chest as she begged to it, begged to the spirit that lay dormant inside to stir and awaken, begged to it to emerge so she could feel anything but uselessness.

She was afraid, terribly afraid, but the few tears that flowed from her eyes came not from fear, but from frustration. She was so frustrated at her own inability to do anything useful that she simply could not handle the emotion any other way. Emilia wanted nothing more then to feel as if she was not just being dragged along as dead weight, she wanted nothing more then to help.

"Puck please…. Please just come out, we really need you now… I need you…" Emilia spoke as she looked down at the green crystal, the soft hue of light within the crystal continuing its slow steady rhythmic pulsing, showing that nothing would be changing with it for the time being.

Emilia was then briefly launched airborne as the entire carriage jerked upward before crashing into the ground, just as she was lifting herself up after being splayed face first on the floor by the impact, she was launched back first into the left wall by the right side of the carriage hitting something and briefly lifting. Before she even had a chance to regain her bearings she was once again launched into the right wall as the left side of the carriage proceeded to slam into something outside.

She pressed herself up from the floor as a thin trickle of dark red blood ran from her nose down her near porcelain white skin. Her whole body was sore, adding to the reasons why the past few days of had been so bad. At this point she no longer had any reason to doubt that her life since leaving the forest had truly become the worst of the worst of the worst. She was miserable, she hated every last horrid moment of it, if this path had been inevitable then she felt that she may as well have never been born.

"Roswaal-sama which way? Rem cannot see anymore." Rem called from the driver's seat, and her call was soon answered by Roswaal who still stood on the roof despite the rough ride.

"Continue straight ahead…SWERVE REM SWERVE!" Roswaal's voice was initially calm as he gave directions before becoming frantic as he shouted.

The air outside grew hot, the whole carriage jerked to the right as there was a massive crash to the left, the sight of the White Whale's hide filling the entirety of the windows on the left side of the carriage. Emilia had once again been thrown around inside the carriage as it seemingly balanced precariously on just its right wheels alone. The carriage then suddenly righted itself as it jerked to the left, repeating the events of just fractions of a second earlier as a whale slammed into the ground right outside the right side of the carriage.

Rem tried to preform a drastic swerve one final time, but whether it was due to the whale simply being too fast, or her superhuman reaction speed being insufficient is unknown; however what is known is that the whale had finally gotten one step ahead of its prey.

The front of the carriage lifted into the air, the screams of the ground dragon became consumed in an orchestra of crashing and banging as Emilia rapidly slammed from one wall to another, her ears ringing from the constant impacts between her head and the wall. Her vision was left spinning as the carriage violently hurtled and tumbled through the air after being tossed by the whale as if it were a mere toy.

They came down with a crash, wood shattered, split, and splintered around her, she felt her skin be split and pierced by broken planks falling around her, and burying her.

She heard two people frantically running outside, but not towards her, she may have been injured and buried in the fall, but she was not their priority, because at this point she did not matter to them in the slightest, its not like her wellbeing meant anything to them anymore.

She forced herself to her feat, her half-elven strength easily pushing away the wood above her, she was battered, bruised, and bleeding, but nothing was broken. The very carriage that had been the source of these injuries had also likely been the thing that broke her fall, leaving her in better shape then most of her travelling companions.

Roswaal of course was more or less unhurt, being thrown into the air is not exactly that big a deal when you can fly. Rem looked to be vastly more beat up then Emilia, most of her clothing covered in rips as blood oozed out, some of her fingers bent at odd angles, but her face was contorted in pure rage as a soft pink glow illuminated it in the setting darkness brought by the coming night, her oni horn had emerged. This had likely happened in order to keep her mobile even with the severe injuries she had sustained from being launched through the air without even having the carriage to break her fall.

Rem was holding something in her arms and shouting to it, pleading to it, but Emilia could not hear over the ringing in her ears, and her brain still felt a bit foggy from all the head trauma she had sustained, causing a delay in her realising that Rem was cradling Ram in her arms, and Ram's body was completely still.

Ram had been perched from one of the carriages windows during the fight with the whale, but as she had not been under the wood with Emilia after they landed it is likely that she had been thrown from the window when the carriage was launched into the air. When you also consider that Ram likely had little to no mana left after battling the whale for as long as she did, leaving her with nothing to use to break her fall. This combined with the fact that Ram does not have a horn like Rem meant that she had no way of pulling additional mana in order to use her Oni form, making her not much more physically tough then a normal human, and a normal human would be pushed to the brink of death from a fall like that.

Like Rem, Ram's body was covered in cuts that oozed blood, but most of her limbs were bent at odd angles, showing clearly that her joints had been broken and twisted far out of position. Blood flowed freely from her mouth and nose, not as a result of a mere internal laceration, but as a result of the right side of her chest being caved in from the impact, likely causing massive internal bleeding. These injuries stood far outside both Emilia's and Rem's healing abilities, they would likely be doable for a healer of Beatrice's calibre, and probably trivial for someone as well versed as Felix, but current the best Ram could rely upon was her sister Rem.

As Emilia's hearing slowly returned, she could make out what Rem was saying as she frantically shook Ram's body, "NEE-SAMA, NEE-SAMA, DON'T DIE HERE NEE-SAMA. NEE-SAMA, YOU'RE TOO TOUGH TO DIE LIKE THIS….." Rem was brought to her senses by Roswaal shaking her by the shoulders before delivering some instruction that Emilia could not hear, before Rem shifted Ram into one of arms as she placed the other just above Ram's heart and began to emit a blue glow, healing magic.

Roswaal's face showed nothing but anger, pure rage as he stepped not more then 3 paces away from the two maids. He turned his head to look to his left and extended his left arm straight out with an open palm, its target was the ground dragon that was scrambling to its feet in a panic after receiving a glancing hit from the whale when it flipped the carriage, leading to it being launched into a patch of smaller tree's.

Roswaal seemingly still needed this ground dragon and so he mouthed the words "Vita" leading to the ground dragon having its body pressed against the ground as its legs gave out due to the temporary vast increase in body mass caused by the yin magic.

Roswaal extended his other hand towards the group of three whales that were approaching them as if to finish them off. From the tips of his fingers came three colourful balls of mana, one glowed red with the passion of the world, the passion to reduce the world to cinders. The next glowed a serene blue, calm as embodied the gentle water that knitted life together. Another one was a pale yet swirling grey, ever turbulent as it represented the tumultuous path that a gust of wind may take through the trees. The final orb was green, green as it represented the diligence of the plants that struggled to thrive as they pushed their way out of the ground.

With nothing but hatred in his eyes Roswaal looked at the approaching whales that made up the Great Mabeast, looked as the four orbs of mana flew from his fingertips before exploding with such force that they threw the whales away, uprooted trees, and levelled an entire section of the forest.

Before the dust could settle Roswaal rushed back to the maids, lifting them up and placing them on the pinned ground dragon, all the while Rem continued to pour her mana into her mortally wounded sister.

"The ground dragon should take you to Sanctuary, Emilia and I will join you there, but I expect Garfiel will be able to provide all the help you need until we arrive once he catches sight of you. Don't look back, don't hesitate for one moment if you want your sister to have even the slightest hope of surviving." And with those words Roswaal released his magic from the ground dragon, which began its hurried run away from the whale and towards the Sanctuary.

Afterwards Roswaal turned to the beleaguered Emilia, and with nothing more then a jerk of his head to indicate to follow him he rose into the air and flew off in the direction the ground dragon went.

And so Emilia choose to follow him by running on foot, its not like she had anywhere else to go.

Running after him should not have been hard for her, he was not moving particularly fast, and for someone with elven blood in their veins this should have been easy, but right now that was anything farther from the truth.

Her entire body hurt from getting tossed around like a ragdoll in the carriage, there was still fog in her mind from how many times she hit her head. When this is compounded with how sleep deprived she was, with how little she had been eating the past few days, it turned what should have been a short jog into an arduous slog.

When she finally arrived at where Roswaal had landed her legs felt like they were about to give out underneath her, she could barely get enough air in to fill her burning lungs, her head felt so light that she could barely stay on her feet, if Puck did come out of his crystal he would probably chastise her for how badly she had been taking care of herself lately.

As she leaned herself up against a nearby tree to try and catch her breath, she saw that Roswaal was talking to a pink haired half-elf, and a golden-haired boy. Rem and Ram were nowhere to be seen, but when she looked farther she saw that the dragon they had ridden was lashed to a post outside a house, it itself was curled up in a ball, obviously incredibly distraught over the events of just a few minutes earlier.

Her attention was drawn back to the boy as he raised his voice to Roswaal, seemingly out of frustration or anger.

"What d'ya mean th't yer goin' inta the tomb, ya ain't got the qualification, so ya won't be gettin' in. Ya think my amazin' self's gonna let ya even try aft'r ya pulled the damn White Whale all the way here!" The boy roared angrily at Roswaal, baring his mouth of razor-sharp teeth at him, but he was seemingly calmed and held back by the half elf placing her small hand on his shoulder.

Although she did not look particularly old, her voice was cracked and tainted with immense age, "Gar-bo you don't need to be so defensive towards Mathers-sama, at least listen to why he wants to do what he is suggesting."

Roswaal flashed the half-elf a smile, it seemed as if there was something behind his smile, a history with this person, but behind his eyes there was nothing but pain, once more seemingly tied to this person he looked at. He did not turn to the young boy before he spoke, he continued to face the half-elf but ow with a fallen face that exuded nothing more then fanaticism.

"I merely do what Sensei asked of me, nothing more and nothing less…."

And with that Roswaal walked past the two, the young boy confused, the half-elf's face dumbfounded.

Lacking anything else to do Emilia heaved her tired body away from the tree and walked towards the village, she had quickly lost sight of Roswaal as he seemingly knew this place like the back of his hand, but having never been here before she was completely clueless when it came to navigating her way around.

The village consisted of a collection of rundown homes, their walls either comprised of stone or wood; those made of planks were warped with age, leading to spaces opening between the boards that were filled with clumps of moss. The houses with stone walls had stood the test of time better then those made of wood, yet they too were not impervious to the many seasons they had to endure as most were littered with cracks created by the rise and fall of the temperature, the freezing and thawing of water. Every building however had a roof made of a mixture of thatch and wooden planks, in general they all appeared to be much newer than the buildings they topped, likely due to being replaced over the years.

This led to a situation where all the buildings had very slight visual distinctions, but overall they looked very similar; meaning that after some time it would be easy to navigate through the village but prior to that it would be very difficult. When you consider how the sun had already set, resulting in the entire area being enveloped by a thick darkness, further increasing the difficulty of navigating this new place.

But she could see the building that had ground dragon lashed to a post outside it, the building where Rem had likely brought Ram. With nowhere else to go Emilia approached this building and walked through the door to an inside lit solely by a single candle.

The candle illuminated a bedside with a flickering orange glow, illuminating one side of Ram while casting long shadows across her other side. Her once ornate black and white maid uniform was now torn, and drenched in blood, her own blood. It had so thoroughly soaked through her clothing that it caused it to glisten, reflecting the scarce amounts of light as her chest rose and fell as she struggled to take each shallow breath with what remained of her respiratory system.

Ram's face was pale and devoid of colour, her eyes shut as her face contorted in pain with each breath she managed to suck in. Beside her Rem was knelt with her hands hovering over Ram's abdomen as the blue glow of healing magic illuminated the deep gashes and chest wound on her sister's body, wounds that were not closing in the slightest.

Without looking up from her sister Rem spoke to Emilia in a voice that was both tired but full of hatred, "Can you not leave Rem alone, can you not take anything more from her? First you took Subaru-kun away and now Nee-sama is badly hurt because of you. It's like you want to ruin Rem's life by destroying the lives of everyone Rem cares about, so what are you going to do next half-devil? Will you find a way to draw the whale right to Nee-sama's bedside? Will you make Rem watch Nee-sama die?" Rem's voice at the end began to falter as she visualized the idea of her sister dying, a few tears began to fall from her eyes and landed on the edge of the bedsheets. Rem bit her lip before saying, "Rem needs to focus on Nee-sama, so please leave Emilia-sama…"

And so Emilia did just that, she walked out the door and slumped down beside it, pulling her knees up to her chin and burying her face into them as she began to sink into a sea of self loathing and melancholy.

Raindrops began to fall and as she had nothing above her head and nowhere to go she quickly became soaked to the bone.

"Can't say I don't deserve this…. But I realllly wish things didn't turn out like this… I don't even have you anymore Puck…" Emilia said this out loud to herself in a quiet and small voice full of regret, but as her face was buried and therefore muffling it there was no chance that even Rem would hear anything over the sound of the rain.

She wanted to cry, she felt so terrible on the inside for all that she had done to those around her, but she had been crying so much lately she did not have anymore tears to shed. She likely would not be sleeping tonight on account of the rain, so she was left with nothing but her thoughts to accompany her through the night, something that had been happening all to often these past few days when she would be unable to fall asleep.

She thought back to what seemingly started this series of events, when things had gone from being enjoyable to wretched, when they all used to laugh and play games together to being full of tears and anger.

She still thought that she was right for what she said to Subaru, that he should of told her what was going on, that he should see her for what she was and not the amazing person he saw in his head.

From what she had heard from Roswaal this had led to him making some arrangement with a very bad person, that person had twisted and toyed with his mind until he hated each and every one of them to the point that he would gladly watch her die. It hurt her to think that her own action had led to the boy who had been so nice to her, who had always been so happy to be around her, to wish nothing but death at the hands of a mad man on her.

She had brought the witches cult down upon the capital, they had been hunting for her and while they had done that they essentially put the city to the sword. They hacked civilian and knight apart with their sharp daggers, they drenched the city in flames, burning both homes and their occupants.

People had died for her, some willingly, some unwillingly; she watched one knight die before her very eyes as he bled to death, waiting for her to administer healing magic via the spirit arts, waiting for something that never came.

And now because of her they had been forced to leave the city earlier then intended, leading to them running into the whale and having Ram be so badly hurt that it did not honestly look like she would make it. Emilia was by no means anywhere near an expert on healing magic but seeing that her wounds were not closing showed that at best Rem's magic was doing nothing more then keeping her from deaths door, but not moving her any farther from it. Eventually Rem would run out of mana, and when that happened Ram would become another name on the long list of people that Emilia had killed.

Roswaal did not seem to see her as anything other then luggage, Rem hated her, and now it seemed that not even Puck wanted anything to do with her.

She was wrong, she still had tears to cry, and they were coming out now, coming out as the rain gradually lessened in intensity before stopping completely. Leaving her to shiver in her soaked clothes as the moon moved across the sky before it to set and the sun began its rise opposite to it. The whole time nothing crossed her mind other then how terrible she was, so terrible and useless that nobody wanted anything to do with her, so terrible and useless that she questioned why they had not just throw her from the carriage in an attempt to divert the whales attention.

As the sun's rays began to crest buildings of the village Emilia was stirred from herself loathing by the sound of approaching voices.

"My amazin' self told ya that ya wouldn't be 'llowed into th' tomb, yet ya tried anyways and got what was comin' ta ya." It was the golden haired boy who had met Roswaal when they had entered the village the previous day. Although Emilia did not lift her head from her knee's she recognized who he was speaking to the second he spoke, it was a voice that was familiar to her that spoke in a manner that was odd in its normalcy, as this normalcy was but a new replacement for its old eccentricity.

"As I said before, I do just what my Sensei instructed, if this was the result then this is what she intended to happen. Were I to deviate from her instructions even in the slightest then the shared interest between us may quickly become unattainable. Therefore I shall follow the writ exactly, regardless of whatever consequences may befall me, Garfiel." Roswaal spoke in a grave and serious voice as he led Garfiel towards the hut, when he reached the door he stopped briefly beside Emilia.

"This will pertain to you as well, in fact it may be more important for you then almost anyone else."

He then grabbed Emilia by the arm and dragged her to her feet, before leading her into the house with Garfiel in tow.

As they entered the building Garfiel seemed to freeze up at the sight of Ram, his breath catching in his throat as he froze in place, his eyes not moving away Ram for even an instant.

"Rem let Garfiel take over for a bit, you need to recuperate your reserve of mana." Roswaal said in a voice devoid of any concern whatsoever, almost like a passing remark.

"Rem is alright Roswaal-sama, Rem can continue as long as Nee-sama needs her." Rem's voice was filled with exhaustion, but she sounded determined to do whatever her sister needed.

"This concerns Ram, you will need all the mana you can get in the coming days, should you run out then Ram will die. So rest now while Garfiel can cover for you, unless you hold your own pride above your beloved sisters well being?" Roswaal sounded slightly annoyed as he said this, like it was just a mere trifle in the way of what he really wanted to accomplish.

Garfiel approached Ram's bedside with glossy eyes, unable to believe what he was seeing. As he knelt down beside the bed he locked eyes with Rem as he placed his hands in a similar fashion to hers, emitting his own blue light as he began to pour his own mana into Ram in the form of healing magic. However just like Rem's it did not seem to have any effect besides keeping Ram breathing, her grievous wounds showing not the slightest sign of healing.

Once Rem had confirmed that Garfiel had adequately taken her position she stood up, her movements vastly more sluggish than what was normal for her, the fatigue of casting healing magic straight through the night was clearly catching up with her.

Roswaal slowly and carefully lowered himself into a chair, like he was an old man with a bad back; Rem seemingly collapsed into a chair across from his as Emilia lingered in the doorway as there was not another chair for her to sit in.

"Tomorrow you will take Ram back to the mansion Rem, once your there Beatrice should be capable of healing the wounds that Ram has sustained. Since it is likely that you will need to preform healing magic for the entirety of the way there, starting from when Garfiel's mana gives it, it is necessary for you to rest now." Roswaal was leaned back in his chair with his eyes closed, his breathing was slightly ragged. Wherever and whatever he had been doing the night prior had clearly left him completely drained and exhausted, but he continued, nonetheless.

"In order to facilitate this escape I will go out and face the whale, while I have its attention will be the time for you to leave atop the ground dragon." Roswaal kept his eyes closed, but his brow was furled as if hard in thought, focusing on something as he tried to understand it.

Rem spoke up however, although it took a great load off her heart to know that Roswaal had found a way to save her sister, there was still something bothering her about this plan.

"Roswaal-sama, Rem has faith in you, but can you beat the whale, will you be okay to be left behind like this….. Rem doesn't know how Nee-sama will react if she finds out that Roswaal-sama died so that she could live…." Rem's face showed the confliction she felt as she said this, she wanted to be happy that her sister would certainly survive this, but she dreaded having to tell Ram that Roswaal was gone forever, because she was certain that he could not best an opponent who was all but immune to most conventional magic.

At first Roswaal did not answer this in the slightest, he just reached into his clothes and produced a large book, holding it out for all in the room to see.

"I'm not doing this for Ram, the Gospel's Writ states that I am to face the whale on that day, it also no longer states that you two are necessary, and so I am grating you this opportunity in recognition of the service you both have done me. Whatever transpires in the fight with the whale is what my Sensei has foreseen, so whatever occurs will occur because it is necessary." Roswaal finally opened his eyes, looking right at Rem as he said what he did, his voice and facial expressions showing pure devotion and fanaticism.

But as Roswaal rose to leave the room after returning his book Rem called to him, there were many things that she did not understand from what he said, but one thing stood out, contrasting against his previous words.

"Roswaal-sama, isn't it your ancestors Sensei, not yours?" At these words Rsowaal turned his head so that Rem could only see his blue eye and not his yellow one.

"As far as I am aware, I did not stutter."

Roswaal then turned his head to face forward, speaking again but this time to Emilia and not Rem.

"This marks the end of my sponsorship for you, Emilia. From this point onward I shall not provide political, material, nor support of any other kind. Consider yourself to now be the sole remaining member of the Emilia camp. Unlike Ram and Rem, I have nothing to give you, you don't deserve any kind of parting gift in the slightest."

With that Roswaal turned and left the house, at which point Rem went into another room to lay down and rest, so that she would be in the best condition possible to help her sister when her turn came.

Meanwhile Emilia wanted to be shocked but quite frankly she could not possible be surprised. She had expected this day to come and it finally did, Roswaal had given up on her and now she had nothing. In the space of less then 10 days she had gone from finally starting to be happy, to being unhappy, to having absolutely nothing. She was now in a worse position then she had been in the Elior forest, even though she had lacked a steady food source, and she had faced occasional discrimination when she had encountered others. But at least she had been able to find joy in her simple life, now however she had been brought into a highly complex political situation, every single person she had grown even slightly close to had turned away from her, and she had been all but abandoned in an entirely unfamiliar part of the country.

Emilia looked down at her feet, and the growing pool of water that was running down her body and pooling beneath her. She decided that she would just walk away as she was now completely detested here, Rem defiantly did not want her here and if the look Garfiel made when he saw Ram's condition was anything to go by, he would not want her here either when he found out who caused Ram to be in the condition she was in.

She sighed as she pushed herself off of the wall she was leaning against, her feet still ached so badly, just like the rest of her body. She had not had the chance to rest and so her body felt even worse compared to yesterday, she was beginning to get the chills even though it was too warm at this point to warrant such a feeling. She could feel beads of sweat forming on her body even though she had not done any kind of rigorous activity since she had to run from where their battle with the whale finished. Her head felt unnaturally heavy, it teetered as she felt like she was barely strong enough to keep it steady atop her shoulders.

As she walked along a path that led away from the village she swayed slightly from side to side, barely able to keep to a straight path, almost like she had consumed a large quantity of alcohol. However her condition was not due to some kind of overindulgence, it was due to her poor diet and sleep deprivation being combining with how she spent the entirety of the past night out in the rain.

She reached a three-pronged fork in the path and looked around with her tired eyes, ringed by deep and dark eye bags whilst being half closed. The world around her was beginning to look more and more murky as the fog in her head that had been brought on by her head trauma began to thicken.

To her left she saw a path that led down into a deep and dark forest, the path was overgrown but she thought she saw a young man running down it towards the forest. She got a sense of determination from him, but something seemed wrong with his body, she could only see its outline. She blinked and rubbed her tired eyes but then like magic the outline burst apart into a cloud of green butterflies.

She followed the cloud of insects as the flew from the path on her left to the path straight ahead, a path that appeared to lead to the ruins of a smallish home that had collapsed long ago. When they reached the path they took the form of the young mans silhouette once again, except this time they walked straight towards her.

When she set her eyes on the young man she got the feeling of immense sadness, such intense melancholy that she could not comprehend how someone could possible endure feeling this way. The young man kept walking towards her, it looked like a liquid was dripping off his body, but the aura of pure depression only got worse as he closed the distance between them.

He finally reached her and stopped but she could not make out even one detail of his face, all that she could tell was that he had a longish face and carried himself in a manner resembling a shamble, like simply existing was the worst thing in the world.

But before she knew it he burst into a cloud of butterflies once again, and once again she followed them with her eyes as they travelled to her right. They went to the smallest of the paths that split off from the fork, a narrow one that lead up a hill topped with a dead tree covered in vegetation that barely clung to life.

The butterflies congregated once more, but this time into the shape of a women, who seemed to be waring a long dress that clung tightly to her body. She slowly walked up the hill with sluggish strides, like she was incredibly exhausted, there were only two thing Emilia felt when she saw her, regret and incredible and insatiable greed.

Emilia watched the silhouette as it eventually made its way up the hill, reaching the tree where it buried its head in its hand and remained motionless until it to eventually burst once again into a cloud of butterflies.

Emilia did not have the energy to think, even if she did her head was filled with so much fog at this point that she could not comprehend the world around her even if she wanted to. Her legs felt like they were made of lead, but she kept walking nonetheless, slowly going up the hill towards the tree where the woman's silhouette had gone.

When she reached the top of the hill with the tree she saw the woman's silhouette once more, this time walking alone to her right, away from everything into the woods, but she was not following any paths. As Emilia followed in the footsteps of the woman took she quickly realized that the tree's were not much of a forest, they were a wall, growing just densely enough to prevent someone from seeing through them, making it clear that they had been deliberately planted and did not naturally grow this way.

They surrounded a single log cabin, one that was ever so slightly larger than those that were contained in the village, but it seemed to be in near pristine condition, untouched by the wear of nature like those of the village.

The door was closed but as Emilia walked closer to it she saw the silhouette of the woman once more, it was sat on the edge of the cabins porch, head buried in hands once more. But behind this woman was another silhouette, one of a man. The man sat behind the woman, a hand wrapped around her shoulders as he pulled her head towards his chest; the feeling Emilia got when he saw him was one of understanding, the man understood what the woman was going through, yet she did not get the feeling of anything else particularly strong between them.

When Emilia looked at the outline of the man it seemed familiar to her, she did not get this feeling from any of the other silhouettes, nor did she know who this silhouette reminded her of, it just felt familiar. She got within arms reach of the two but it was at this moment that they finally burst apart into a swarm of butterflies, but as they did this the door to the cabin behind them slightly creaked open as the butterflies swarmed in.

Emilia continued to follow the butterflies, entering the cabin that seemed to be devoid of life, yet completely untouched by the march of time, there was not even a single speck of dust anywhere to be seen. However she could feel vast amounts of mana pulsing around her, so much that it made her uncomfortable, she did not feel this way even when Puck and Roswaal had flung magic strong enough to level mountains at one another.

Emilia walked through the house until she reached the only open door in the house, but through the door she saw a bed just large enough for a single person. She was exhausted and wanted nothing more then to just fall into it, she was too tired to feel tormented by all the sins she had committed up to this point. She walked up to it, collapsing upon it without even caring that her clothes would make it damp, but they did not. She felt her clothes become bone dry without the sheets even becoming the slightest bit damp; the sheets felt so soft, like they were brand new after just being stitched together, if she could she wanted nothing more then to stay like this forever.

She slowly turned onto her back and was met with two figures looking down at her, they were the two silhouettes she had seen outside. They looked directly into her eyes with their blank and empty faces as they stood at the edge of the bed, slowly bending down so that their blank faces were nearly touching her own as if examining her.

But it was at this moment that her feverish and exhausted body finally gave out and her eyelids slowly slid shut as she fell into a deep and dark sleep.

---

The boy was submerged beneath a deep sea, a sea so deep that no matter what fire he may try and muster it could do nothing to bring him something even close to relief.

The boy could not swim to the surface for he was shackled to the bottom of the sea by chains comprised of his past, chains that had wrapped their way around him thanks to the choices he had made from the limited set of options that had been presented to him.

But the boy had long stopped struggling, no longer reaching out for the surface to try and take a breath of the joys life had to offer. He did this because the black thing, the foreign monster within him had spread far enough, it had spread everywhere. No longer was there any part of the boy that was free of its influence, they were one and the same, it had become impossible to tell where one ended and the other began.

Every last piece of who he used to be was gone.

Natsuki Subaru could no longer slip from the influence of the Warlock of Melancholy for more then a second.

For all intents and purposes, Natsuki Subaru was now well and truly gone, and she did not like that one bit.

But her thoughts and whatever she might do were not things that concerned the warlock in the slightest, for he knew what he had to do.

"Suuuubaru-kun, do you see what I see over the trees over there?" Hector questioned Subaru, who after a few seconds of searching his own cone of vision managed to discern the shape of a large object flying through the air. But Natsuki Subaru did not respond to this for his very independence was being restricted at this point, his mental stability had deteriorated to the point that the only way for him to uphold his end of the contract was to serve as a vessel and nothing more.

"It's just a biiiiiiit too dark to know for sure from this distance, we must get closer to confirm that it is the White Whale we have agreed to find." Hector commanded Subaru to get closer, and so he did; however not a single muscle moved on his face, he did not produce a single response nor inkling of self determination, all except for a single tear that rolled its way out of his right eye, his eye that was still its old brown colour as opposed to the black his left had become.

They darted across the plains that they had spent the whole day searching, and the entirety of the previous day following their meeting with Crusch, the meeting that had almost led to Subaru going berserk.

Of course they were not doing any of this on foot, instead they were using the ground dragon that had been lent to them for this very task. It was a large and aerodynamic black Diana, one of the most prideful species that one could find in either Lugunica or its neighboring kingdoms, it had shocked everyone when it had taken a liking to Subaru.

And so it was this dragon that led them across the empty plains near Flügel's tree, running both nimble and swift as the sun slowly slipped beneath the horizon, carrying them towards this large floating thing that was meandering around a forest that bordered on the plains.

"Look below Subaru-kuuuun, signs of battle, and recent" As Hector spoke, Subaru did. He looked down and saw the scarred landscape around them, deep ruts made by wheels and large swaths of earth that were seemingly ripped out and scattered in all directions.

"You wouldn't recognize this place Subaru-kuuun, but for me it brings back so many memories, most of them so horrid that they make my heart plummet so far into the abyss that I wish I didn't have to recall them. Howeveeeeeer among those memories are a handful, all about the same person, the one who had been the light of my life, the sole reason I was able to persist all this time." At this point Hector's voice truly changed, gaining a fullness and elatedness as it filled with emotion, happiness. "Everything I have done since we were separated on that fateful day so many years ago, that fateful day where we both fell, everything has been to see the one who saved me one last time. I have tried before, with peace, and with force, but every time I have failed to pierce through her greed, every time I have met not with my saviour, but with the one who had damned me. However this time will be different, this time I will play the last card that can be played, and in the end if that doesn't work then it shall prove that I spent the last 400 years pursuing a path that never truly existed….."

But just as Hector's mood began to fall at the prospects of his long quest being for nought the air was split by a mind twisting cry, the shrill sound made by the White Whale as it noticed their presence. Although the whale was still quite far away, it was unmistakable at this point, they had found what they were looking for.

"This is it Natsuki Subaru-kuuuuun, you must remember that the White Whale lies outside the town of Sanctuary in the Kremaldy Forest, you must remember this for my memories will not be brought back in time like yours will. So remember Subaru-kuuuun, and bring us back in time, bring us back to the steps of the manor of Crusch Karsten this morning." There was a brief pause as Subaru reached into the bag lashed to the saddle of their ground dragon, but the second the object he had grasped in his hand entered his field of vision Hector went ballistic.

"Wait Subaru-kun what are you doing? Rewind time, don't end it!" Hector's shouts echoed through Subaru's head as he saw the large hunting knife that Subaru was holding in front of his body.

For the first time since they left the city Subaru said something, "I guess not even my own life matters anymore…." Before he plunged the hunting knife into his chest, tearing a hole right through his own heart in order to fulfill the command he had been given.

He was dead mere seconds after hitting the ground after falling from the saddle on the ground dragon.

---

He was in a world filled with shadows, giant billowing black plumes. They surrounded him, they surrounded everything, yet they did not obscure a single thing, but they existed as far as he could see.

His body did not exist anymore, he could not move, he could only look, for he was just a pair of eyes.

Before him stood a door, a large black door that stood taller then almost any door he could remember seeing in his life. It looked to be made of metal, a deep black metal that had exquisite and intricate yet flowing patters engraved in it. There was no obvious handle on this door which one could use to open it, however this door also lacked any form of lock that could be used to hold it shut.

This door seemed to lead into some kind of tunnel, a tunnel of black shadow that spiraled off far into the distance, shadow that bore little resemblance to the other shadows that made up this world, so different that it was unfair to label both kinds the same way.

It was dark and crude, completely opaque, while the other kind flowed beautifully this kind did not flow whatsoever, seemingly trapped in time it just hung there. If both these shadows were the product of something, a result of some intelligent design as opposed to natural phenomenon, they could not be attributed to the same creator, one was seemingly a masterful work of art while the other seemed to be an early try of an apprentice rushing against the clock.

Although Subaru was only a pair of eyes and this tunnel of crude shadow stretched off far away, he could still see where it went for the exquisite shadows did not obstruct his vision.

The tunnel of shadows led far away to another door, an exact replica of the one that stood directly in front of him, and directly opposite to that door was a third one, also identical to the previous two.

Connected to this third door was also a tunnel of crude shadow that spiraled and spun a long path through this realm that existed beyond the understanding of most. But unlike the first tunnel, this one slowly spiraled towards Subaru, closer and closer it came, until he saw that it connected to a fourth door, identical to the other 3.

This door stood directly behind Subaru, and if one where to consider his starting orientation, they could say that he was 'coming' from this door and 'approaching' the one that stood directly before him.

But after completing this look around of this strange place that felt so familiar yet so foreign a voice rang out.

"I love you" was all it said.

And then Natsuki Subaru found himself back in his body, back in the capital city of the kingdom of Lugunica.

"The stench surrounding you is truly horrendous, Subaru-kun, waaaaaaaaait…" Hector's voice rang through Subaru's head, slowly catching on to what must have occurred.

"Sanctuary in the Kremaldy forest." Was all Subaru said in response to Hector, and he could almost feel Hector smiling, if such a thing were even possible for someone who lacked a mouth of their own.

---

A man walked through the trees towards an area that had been ravaged by an attack that had shook the very land to its core, it had picked up and tossed trees like they were sticks, diverted streams like they were nothing, and massacred untold amounts of wildlife like they were mere insects.

The man wore not his usual attire, in place of his clownish outfit was a long and exquisite black jacket, with a white shirt underneath; the whole arrangement itself was not something that had been seen outside of choice events in hundreds of years, it was not something he had worn for four centuries.

He did not don his makeup, allowing his natural face to be seen by the world, showing that he did not intend to play a trickster or manipulator any longer, he intended to face the coming trial as directly as he could.

The wind gently blew the long blue hair of Roswaal J Mathers to the side as he locked eyes with what would be the first of his opponents this day, The White Whale.

And the White Whale did not delay for one instant, it had already been denied a meal once thanks to a scent it feared, it would not be denied again.

Its jaw flung open as a column of its terrifying mist hurtled towards him as the whale flew just behind, mouth open as it prepared to enjoy a feast days in the making.

But Roswaal did not move, not even as the mist was a hair length from consuming him, instead he just smirked, because he had one advantage compared to last time. This time he had no allies that he had to hold back around out of fear of killing them through collateral damage.

Just as it looked like he was finished the air all around him exploded outward in a fury, a massive crack filled the air as a violent swarm of air blades that all stood taller than the whale was long dissipated the fog like it was child's play. Several slammed directly into the whale itself, throwing it into the ground with a force that should have been capable of crushing buildings as their battle truly began.

The second the whale touched the ground Roswaal darted forward, jumping atop the whale as it began to attempt to regain altitude. The White Whale may have been a mabeast, but it understood just how dangerous it is to have a small and nimble opponent clinging to its massive body.

Roswaal knew that he would never win a war of attrition against an opponent that countered him so heavily, he knew that he had to end this fight quickly. In order to accomplish this he had prepared 2 trump cards, both had required the entirety of the past day to prepare due to the sheer complexity and power of the magic involved. One of them could only be cast once, the other would exact a heavy toll from him each time he had to rely on it.

Roswaal also knew that the chances of Hector coming for him grew by the day following his failed attempt to steal Subaru back with the attack on the capital. He desired to keep his distance based attack in reserve, facing Hector in hand to hand combat was suicidal, however the whale may not grant him the luxury of choice in this regard. But Roswaal also knew that if the whale split before he could mark the real one that he would be forced to gamble with his trump cards, he would have to guess and hope that they landed on the true target, and with each that did not his options would only grow more and more limited.

Maybe the whale knew this, maybe it was just bad luck on his part, but the whale chose to split the second it lifted off the ground. Its 3 constituent bodies all flying upwards in parallel to one another, pores on their back opening up as they spewed fog everywhere, before they all curved inwards and slammed their backs together in an attempt to crush the pest that had squirmed its way into the midst of them.

But they were too slow for Roswaal had long released his grip, falling to the ground and landing softly on his feet with the aid of some magic.

As all three whales dove down towards him in unison he prepared to make his first bet, there was no point in wasting his own effort on firing conventional magic that had no hope of killing the whale, and if he won his bet then the fight would end here and now.

As the first of the whales drew closer, its brethren close behind Roswaal began to run towards it, taking one step, then the next before leaping into the air; with the help of murak he managed to fly just a bit higher than the whale as he began his descent towards it.

As he began to fall straight towards its cranium, he twisted his body midair, twisting himself as he prepared to deliver a punch that would break the whale. The whale in question took just a few instants too long to realize that he was above it thanks to his use of magic to alter his trajectory.

Roswaal untwisted his body and threw his punch, and just as his fist touched the White Whale he mouthed the words "Al Vita" to himself.

And in that instant the whale was thrown into the ground like a ragdoll, its body crushed and broken, reduced to a mere pulp as a massive crater formed around it. One of the three White Whales had just been killed in a single punch, struck with a fist that had been made to weigh more then a mountain by a spell that had long been lost to the annals of history, a piece of shadow magic that was so complex that he had been forced to prepare it with his own forearm as the target.

Roswaal hit the ground hard, rolling over and over as his clothes were torn to shreds and his body cut and bruised. His face was contorted in pain as he forced himself to his feet, what remained of his right arm hung uselessly to his side. He had felt how his fist and forearm had been instantly ground to dust by the sheer recoil of his hit, before being brutally ripped from his body by the immense momentum they possessed thanks to his invocation of the strongest level of Vita.

But in the end he had guessed wrong, the other two whales barreled through the air towards him as the body of their fallen brethren slowly began to dissipate into mana. Roswaal stood to meet them with an immense amount of blood pouring from the stump left behind by his attack, the bleeding only being quenched when he turned to ice magic to freeze a coating of the coldest ice around the remains of his arm.

He still had three limbs left to use, losing another one would be a fifty-fifty chance of winning the fight, losing another afterwards would guarantee his victory. But he had already more or less crippled himself with his last use of Al Vitae, and he would not likely have any greater a chance against Hector should he show up if he lost two limbs compared to if he was down his other trump card as well.

But he did not have time to think about things like this, as one whale dove for him he launched himself away with Al Dona before utilizing his flying technique to avoid the other whale coming from a direction perpendicular to that of the first.

In the brief moments he spent floating above the air he surveyed the battlefield, the pure destruction created by the so far and hopefully short confrontation between the White Whale and one of the most powerful magic users to ever live.

Although the landscape was disturbed from their previous encounter, that was nothing in comparison to the utter devastation that lay before his eyes now. The sheer power that was Al Vita had been enough to kill one of the whales in a single hit had produced a massive crater that stood well over 10 men deep. The shockwave produced by the impact of a mountain with the whale had caused far more damage, flattening trees as far as his eyes could see; when he turned towards the village of Sanctuary far off in the distance, he could even see that some of the buildings there had collapsed.

Roswaal quickly flung his body to the side as a blast of fog nearly consumed him just as he began to land. But he did not have time to rest as he quickly cast Al Huma at the whale to drive it off course, just as the other whale resumed with a second attack, forcing Roswaal to throw himself to the ground in order to avoid it.

The situation was beginning to spiral out of control, the whale's attacks were becoming more and more rapid. Perhaps it knew that its prey was wounded at this point, perhaps it was a mere illusion brought on by his blood loss, perhaps both. But if one thing was for certain it was that if Roswaal did not make another gamble soon then it would likely be the end of the line for him.

He would be unable to fulfill the last page of his Gospel, the final instruction he was given in order to ensure the return of his Sensei to the mortal realm. Originally it had seemed like it would have taken at least another decade or two to fulfill the gospels writ, but everything had changed after Hector left him.

At first it had brought mania and madness to his eyes, when the whole world seemingly diverged from what was described by the sole thing that had guided him for the past 4 centuries, but to his wonderment the Gospel had course corrected itself.

It had been a sight to behold, it had brought wonder, it had reinforced his trust and belief in Echidna when he watched the lettering rearrange itself before his very eyes. The gospel had laid out a new path, one that was only a few pages long and would be fulfilled mere days after he saw it.

At the end of this path was one last instruction, one final commandment, if he could survive his encounter with the White Whale then he will have fulfilled the writ. And so he had to do just one last thing, after that nothing would matter, survive and his life's work will be completed.

And so from this he found the will to draw his other trump card, one that he would use to gamble with once more.

As one of the White Whales barreled towards him, flying low across the barren landscape riddled with shattered tree trunks, Roswaal Raised his left hand and pointed towards it.

His body may have been broken, his mind all but wrecked, but his heart stood strong, and that was all he needed to unleash his spell, Ul Shario.

The sky itself contorted, twisting and turning, before it began to burn. It took on a reddish hue before becoming incredibly bright as a single star itself hurtled towards the ground.

Roswaal had cast a piece of magic that had not been forgotten by those alive today, it had never been discovered by normal humans to begin with. Not even his Sensei had taught it to him, his sole knowledge of the spell came from when he had heard Beatrice boasting that Echidna had used the Al version to kill over a hundred silver dragons in a single go.

The complexity of the spell meant that Roswaal could never hope to just cast it, it had taken him nearly an entire day to prepare the Ul version meaning that Al would have taken him much longer, too long. But Ul had been enough, he watched with glee as the burning star hurtled towards the whale, setting most of what remained of the Kremaldy forest ablaze underneath it before it slammed into the whale.

The whale was instantly pinned to the ground before the star pierced it and set it alight, before exploding into a wonderous ball of fire that scattered carbonized chunks of the whale in all directions. Having been met with a demonstration of raw magical power that exceeded its ability to dissipate and absorb mana, the whale was simply overwhelmed by raw power before it could do anything about it. The spell had not failed due to lack of magical energy before it managed to transfer its massive amount of kinetic and thermal energy to the measly body of the whale.

But his glee was soon dissipated when the third and final whale did not disappear, he had rolled wrong again and killed another copy.

But a sound rang out that returned some sense of hope that he would survive his meeting with what essentially constituted the anitmagic mabeast, it was Crusch Karsten shouting the word "Attack!" at the top of her lungs.

---

"Crusch-sama, Ferri-chan doesn't know how to say this, but isn't this just a bit too hasty?" Ferris questioned Crusch nervously from his position atop one of the ground dragons.

"Felix, there are times to be cautious and avoid risk, and there are times that one must move with momentum and take the hand they are dealt. If we don't succeed here then there is no purpose in even pretending that there's a chance of winning the Royal Selection, and if we don't try there is no chance of success. Place your faith in Wilhelm that this will succeed, and if by chance Wilhelm is unsuccessful then we must place our faith in the one who found the whale to begin with." Crusch rotated in the saddle of her ground dragon to look towards the rear of the column she led, towards where Natsuki Subaru road with Wilhelm not far behind. She could see from where she was that his mouth was moving, but that everyone around him was attempting to ignore him, that he was speaking to himself.

Under normal circumstances there was no way she could bring herself to rely on someone like him, no chance she would allow someone so clearly unhinged to accompany her army into battle. But this time she did not really have a choice, for her army stood so few in number that it could barely be recognized as a fighting force of any significance anymore. The first battle against the White Whale, and the desperate defense against the Witches Cult's attack had surely taken their toll upon the strength of her house.

Many of her loyal retainers had been lost, either falling in battle or being so wounded that they were in no condition to fight any longer, some likely for the rest of their lives. Among her retainers that held a lesser degree of loyalty there had been rampant desertion as they chose to forsake the house they had pledged their loyalty to, no longer seeing the same surety of a future as they had before.

And so it was due to this that their fight against the whale would likely hinge on two people, Wilhelm Trias, The Sword Demon, and Natsuki Subaru, The Mad Slayer of Sloth.

But the entire column was suddenly jolted to attention as massive crash echoed through the land, so massive that it caused the very ground beneath their feet to shake with such ferocity that some men lost their balance atop their ground dragons and came clattering to the ground.

The sound had originated not far from where they stood, and so Crusch rushed to the top of the tiny foothill that seemingly obscured their vision commotions source. And she could not believe the sight before her eyes, Roswaal L Mathers stood in the midst of a massive crater, blood pouring from one of his arms; however with him in the crater was a corpse of a large whale. It looked like it had once been white but it was now red and no longer resembled a whale in the slightest. It looked like a giant mass of ground meat as it lay there horribly contorted, appearing as if every single last bone in its body had been shattered by whatever had impacted it, but it would not remain for long as they watched it slowly disappear.

As her army filtered up the hill to join her they were all frozen in place, unable to move as they watched a spectacle unfold before them. They saw the margrave face off against two whales, skillfully avoiding them through a combination of magic and physical techniques despite his wounds, but it was clear that unless something changed that he would soon fall.

Crusch was just about to give the order to attack, to join the battle while their surprise ally still stood, but just in that moment they saw the margrave simply point at the whale as the air grew hot around them, as the normal morning sky above them seemed to twist and streak.

Nobody could move as they saw how a star plummeted from the heavens towards one of the two remaining whales, how the ground underneath it was scorched to cinders by the immense amount of heat that it radiated. They were left speechless when they saw it slam side on into the whale, driving it into the ground like how a fence post was driven by a hammer, piercing it like how a person could be impaled on the end of a spear, before the starburst apart into flames, scattering the whale in all directions.

But Roswaal L Mathers looked like he was completely spent at this point, his back was no longer ram rod straight but bent as he leaned forward. He panted as he tried to recover from the exertion of casting a spell whose power eclipsed that considered reasonable by mortal standards.

Although his exhaustion and fatigue left him in a dire straight as he faced an opponent that seemed just as fresh as ever, it would also provide an opportunity for the Second Subjugation Army led by Crusch Karsten. They would swoop in and save the margrave from his last remaining opponent, allowing them to be able to claim partial credit for the defeat of the White Whale.

And so to achieve this Crusch raised her sword high into the air as she screamed one word, "ATTACK!" at the top of her lungs.

And with her word the entire force under her command surged forth with vigour, down the hillside and into the crater, towards the Great Mabeast itself.

Well almost the entire force.

---

Subaru remained motionless atop the black ground dragon as an army charged around him, but he was alone in his fixation, his fixation on the blue haired mage off in the distance. His entire body was as still as a statue as he watched, except for his mouth which moved just enough to let the occasional fragment of speech out into the open air.

"Why is he here, that means they have to be here. Why Why Why Why Why Why Why Why Why Why v Why Why Why Why Why Why Why Why Why Why Why Why Why Why Why Why Why Why Why Why Why Why Why Why Why Why Why Why Why Why Why Why Why Why Why Why Why Why Why Why did you force me to come here Hector. Why do you force me to have to see them over and over again, it makes me too sad to see them, but you keep forcing me into situations that I will be forced to. It's so sad that I can't take it, I don't want to have to take it, yet you make me take it, you force me to have to endure it. Over and over and over and over again I am dragged into dealing with those people who made my life so bad, so terrible. They used me, hurt me, killed me, but you you you you you you don't seem to care, don't seem concerned in the slightest that I will have to see them again. I'm done with you, no more deal, no more contract, I'll take the punishment, just let me out. I want to go home, I want to die, I want to go home, I want to die, I want anything that will give me peace, give me respite, so just let me ou….."

Subaru fell from the saddle of the ground dragon as his body became racked with pain, his nerves burned like someone had cut his skin open and was rubbing salt into them. His muscles were spasming so severely that his limbs were contorting beyond their normal range of motion; he wanted to scream yet he could not as the muscles in his throat clamped his windpipe shut so that he could not even breathe. His eye with the black pupil grew red and bulged outward until several blood vessels within it burst, leading to a crimson stream beginning to seep out from around it.

After that happened Subaru's body went limp, his resistance vanished, but after a single moment of stillness he pressed himself up from the ground. Once he stood on his own two feet again he opened his mouth as if to speak again, and speak he did.

"It really brings me down having to do this Subaru-kuuun, it truly saddens my heart to have to turn on my partner like so, the world is truly a horrid place to force my hand as such, yet in the end I can not let you ruin things so close to the end."

However as these words left his lips the world froze around him and grew dark, shadows billowed at his feet as he felt a pair of slender arms reach over his shoulders to place themselves on his chest.

"I love him I love him I love him I love him I love him I love him I love him I love him I love him I love him I love him I love him I love him I love him I love him I love him I love him I love him I love him I love him I love him I love him I love him I love him I love him I love him I love him I love him I love him I love him I love him" Rang out from all directions in the form of an insane chant coming from a voice that was as soft and soothing as the ring of a little bell.

"I will free him I will free him I will free him I will free him I will free him I will free him I will free him I will free him I will free him I will free him I will free him I will free him I will free him I will free him I will free him I will free him I will free him I will free him I will free him I will free him I will free him I will free him I will free him I will free him I will free him I will free him I will free him I will free him I will free him" Chanted the voice before it disappeared into the shadows, which soon dissipated as light returned to the world and time resumed.

And the second that it did Hector turned to remount the ground dragon, but perhaps sensing a change in its master, the black diana stood there growling at him, refusing to let him ride.

"The Witch of Envy moves to oppose me, that alone shows how horrid this world has always been towards me, but your opposition isn't even depressing, it just irritates me…."

As the last of Hector's words left the lips of Subaru's body the air grew heavy in an instant as something unseen slammed into the back of the ground dragon with immense force. It hammered it over and over again, the first few times were met with the ground dragons screaming accompanied by a chorus of snapping and cracking as the bones broke in its body. The latter few were not met with anything other then a squishing sound as spurts of blood were thrown into the air from the mashed corpse of the black diana.

"So depressing…." Was all Hector said as he began to trudge his way after the army that had begun their attack on the White Whale, showing not the slightest bit of haste even though he knew he was now racing against the clock.

---

"Keep your spacing but remain in eyeshot!" Crusch bellowed at her troops as they scurried around the ground, desperately dodging the whale's attacks as they hurled spells and projectile weapons up at it, barely even scratching it.

They were few in number, far too few to dare to challenge the whale like they had, relying on two individuals to carry them through the day; of these two one had not followed them into battle, choosing to remain back and watch instead, the other driven into such a reckless bloodlust was likely beyond logic at this point.

"YOU ARE NOTHING BUT A BEAST, I SHALL NOT ALLOW YOU TO ESCAPE AGAIN ASLONG AS I DRAW BREATH!" The Sword Demon screamed this at the top of his lungs as he jumped from the saddle of his ground dragon, sword in hand.

The whale passed directly underneath him mere fractions of a second later, swallowing his ground dragon whole. But while it was busy with this Wilhelm spun midair and came down on it with vengeance as he drove his sword deep into its back as he landed just behind its head.

His movements were truly fitting of a demon, running so fast that it was hard to keep up as massive spurts of blood emitted from everywhere along the whales body.

He hacked, slashed, chopped, and cleaved that one could doubt whether he was still sane, whether the title of demon was still just a title.

Nothing could quench his bloodlust, only deepen it as pieces of flesh began to fall off the whale, before the whale howled in rage as one of its eyes fell to the ground below.

He sprinted along the White Whale's back screaming as he cleaved a long and bloody trench as he ran, but the White Whale was not so meek as to just let all this happen.

It curved its body upward and sailed into the air, gaining altitude at a brisk pace, beginning to spin and emit fog as it did so.

It quickly became apparent to Wilhelm that the whale was far too high in the air for him to safely jump to the ground, so he jammed his sword as deep as it would go into the whale, all the way up to the hilt and clung to it for life.

He looked down below at all the soldiers he had accompanied here as they quickly became mere specks, some scurrying around, some standing still as they watched, and some unmoving as they grew red.

They had been in battle with the whale for just a few minutes, but they had already lost a sizeable portion of their force, mainly due to how they were but a fraction of the army that had faced the whale the first time, for every ten they had then they now had to make do with just one.

But the Sword Demon could not care less about such trivial matters at this point, if it meant finally killing the whale he would sacrifice anything, his life, the lives of his friends, the whole army if need be, the only thing that mattered was this horrid monster finally dying.

But the whale did not grant him such luxuries like dwelling on his thoughts as it soon broke the cloud layer and began to twirl, to spin with such violence that he could barely hold on.

His sword was slick with blood, slippery, but he held on, held on with every fiber of strength in his being.

Held on even as he felt the handle begin to slip from his hands.

Held on until it finally did slip from his hands.

As he began to plummet towards the ground he reached out trying to grasp onto the handle of the blade that jutted from the mabeasts back. As he fell he looked up at the whale and even he was not oblivious to the irony of it all.

He had loved his wife with every fiber of his being, cherished every moment they had spent together, but in the end he had never managed to say those fateful words to her, the fateful words "I love you." And before he knew it she was gone, dead, slain by the beast above alongside her own grandson who resided back in the capital, not on the battlefield avenging his grandmother.

Just like then he had come so far, spending every day since her death on a path of vengeance, finding the opportunity not once, but twice. However just like then he had been unable to see it through to the end, he had never gotten to tell her that he loved her and now he would never slay the beast that took her away.

As the ground drew closer Wilhelm closed his eyes, he knew he would be dead in a few seconds and there was one thing he wanted to do. He recalled the last moment they had spent together, when she had left the house to fight this very whale, when she had stopped him from going in her place or joining her, and he said "I'm sorry Theresia…."

But the death he waited for did not come, in fact his body felt incredibly light, too light. And so when he opened his eyes he realized that he was floating just above the ground. He was shocked, he should have been killed by the fall, and when he looked around with a face matching his mindset he saw a blue haired mage with a stump of a right arm.

"What can I say, my grandmother was quite fond of you and it would've saddened her to know that I let you die when I could've easily saved you." The fatigued and injured mage just shrugged his shoulders at this while Felix and Crusch rushed to his landing sight.

"Old Man Will are you alright?" Shouted Felix in a panicked voice as he knelt down and quickly began to check Wilhelm over for injuries.

Wilhelm waved him away however and began to stand up, and said "Nothing more then my pride as a swordsman was injured, that predicament was the result of a lack of skill on my behalf…."

Wilhelm then turned to Crusch and seemingly bit down on his tongue before saying the words he seemingly dreaded to say, his voice heavy with regret as he spoke them, "Crusch-sama, it appears that we are unlikely to win this predicament, it seems that I am no longer strong enough to best the whale…."

Wilhelm then bowed, going as far as to kneel before her as he made a final request, "if an old man may have a final wish, hand me another sword and let me face the whale as you leave with the last of the troops. If I cannot slay the beast, at least let this old man repent for his sins and die the same way his wife did…"

Wilhelm looked up at Crusch as he waited for an answer, his eyes held the beginnings of a tear as they glistened in the sun's rays. He had arrived on the battlefield as a man filled with vengeance, anger, and hatred, but in short order those had been stripped from him when he realized that after his second attempt he had not bested his adversary, leaving him with nothing more then a death wish.

Crusch grabbed Wilhelm by the collar and lifted him to his feet before speaking directly to him in a voice filled with strength.

"Wilhelm I will not allow such a look to exist on the face of a man of your stature! There will be no running away this time, nor will there be any suicidal sacrifices because we have given up. What has happened to you, what happened to the man that marched into the Royal Palace and challenged the Sword Saint, Theresia van Astrea to a duel? What happened to the man who bested a sword saint in single combat, fueled by nothing other then the love he held for her? What would she think if she saw you like this, how would she react knowing that the man she fell for had been reduced to a broken shell of his former self? She would be heart broken I tell you!"

Crusch then paused for a moment as she changed the voice she used from that befitting a commander to one used by a friend.

"I don't refuse to run away because of something as vain as the Royal Selection, I do it because each and every one of us has or has had a Theresia in our life, someone who wouldn't be able to stand to see us reduced to regretful broken messes. I promise you Wilhelm that we will not die here, there is still a chance of victory in this fight, we still have a card in our sleeve."

As Crusch finished Felix turned his head to look behind Crusch as Roswaal narrowed his eyes, both seeing the same person slowly walking towards them with a gait that radiated nothing more then his general disdain for life itself.

"To inspire a man who has given up, to force someone who no longer wishes to fight, it brings me down to hear it. You truly are the worst of the worst of the worst Crusch Karsten, by trying to drive away the melancholy that encroaches on one's heart you only end up making it worse in the end, its truly depressing…." Hector sighed after he finished speaking, walking up to join the loose circle that had formed, a circle consisting of Crusch, Felix, Wilhelm, and Roswaal.

"Subaru-kyun that's very rood to Crusch-sama! First you don't join in the battle as she risks her life, then you ridicule her like this when she's just trying to help Old Man Will, who do you think you are?" Felix began to get worked up at who he though was Subaru, but Roswaal clamped his remaining hand on the healer's shoulder to stop things before they could escalate any further, his eyes wide like he was looking at a ghost as he did so.

"That name…. it brings me down to be addressed by it, its wrong, its irritating to be called something I'm not. If I wasn't so distraught, I would ask Roswaaaaaal to correct you, if I didn't despise him so much this would've been a reunion. If this wasn't keeping me from the reunion I wish for I would say that I don't hate this with the vigour that I do, there's just so much melancholy here…" Hector looked straight at Roswaal while saying this, blood continuing to trickle from his eye as he looked directly into Roswaal's panicked ones.

"Why would you bring a monster like him here? Why would you deem it wise to bring Hector, The Warlock of Melancholy to the Kremaldy forest. He is a devil that has haunted me and my Sensei for 400 years and you brought him right here, the last place in the world that he should be!" Roswaal was falling deeper and deeper into mania as he faced Hector, who did not stir from his melancholy in the slightest.

While this was going on between the two Crusch and Felix were taken aback at the idea that Hector was not just an alter ego created by Subaru's madness, that Roswaal knew him, and that he was addressed with the title of Warlock, a title of the same caliber as what the Witch of Envy carried.

Wilhelm was trying to resolve the quandary in his mind, it was true that Theresia would have hated to see him as he was now. But he also could not get over being unable to beat the whale, and at the age that he was he could feel himself getting just ever so slightly weaker with each passing day, thus it meant that if he could not win now, he never would. This thought poisoned his heart as he found himself completely consumed by his failure, unable to bring himself to any form of action, even if every instinct screamed in his body that they were in incredible danger at this very moment.

"To call me by such names, it really wears away at my heart Roswaaaaaaal. Although it saddens me to say this, we must put this encounter on pause as the stench this boy is plagued with has drawn in something even more depressing than yourself. I hate having to do more work then is necessary, it dampens my mood so much, but it will get in the way of what I must do if I don't deal with it." Just as Hector finished talking he slowly looked up, and when everyone else followed his eyes with their own they were greeted with the sight of the White Whale's open jaws, only a few body lengths from where they stood.

"Felix!" Crusch shouted as she shoved her friend as hard as she could out of harms way, watching the look of terror on his face with a heavy heart as he came to the realization of what would happen to her.

"So depressing…" Hector muttered as Roswaal sprung back, and Wilhelm remained completely still.

As a result the trio of Crusch, Wilhelm, and Hector were swallowed by the White Whale.

---

Her midsection was on fire, the air around her felt damp and humid, and when she slowly cracked open her eyes it was so dark she could barely see, yet she could feel herself being moved, she knew where she was, inside the mouth of the White Whale.

She needed to breath, her lungs screamed for oxygen, but her mouth was full of a liquid that tasted like iron, it was blood. She rolled her head to the side and opened her mouth as a massive amount of it flowed out, drenching the left side of her face as it ran out.

She could feel that she was on her back, but she did not feel anything underneath her, so she tried to sit up, but when she did so her body exploded into a storm of pain. It was electrifying as it ran out from her midsection to all parts of her body, screaming at her to stop trying to move, it was the worst pain she had ever felt in her life, she wanted to scream out, she wanted it to stop.

She clamped her eyes shut as her entire face was contorted and twisted, her body barely able to handle the unquantifiable amount of pain that was shaking her to her very core. She started to feel everything grow cold, her vision going in and out of focus as her consciousness began to lose its grasp on reality, as she moved closer and closer to passing out.

She took in a deep breath and tried to steady herself, she was strong and would force her body to keep fighting by willpower alone if necessary. She built her willpower and gathered her strength as she craned her neck forward to look at what was causing this fire in her midsection, and when she what it was she could not help but wince.

Crusch Karsten was impaled through her midsection on one of the White Whale's teeth.

As she came to the realization of how dire her situation was the entire world tilted as the whale began to turn and something black flew out and hit her pinned body.

She screamed out as the pain grew from what she thought was the maximum possible to new unimaginable heights, her vision burned bright white as she felt she the muscle, skin, fat, and connective tissue of her middle be slowly torn apart against the jagged and serrated edge of the whale's tooth. She could not keep her eyes open as the pain soared higher and higher, until she felt herself falling as part of the tooth cracked and snapped off.

The pain and her cries grew even worse as slammed into the wall of the whale's mouth, the jagged piece of bone being jammed even further into her, widening the wound, yet when she managed to open her eyes she wanted to cry out for a different reason.

Filling nearly the entirety of her field of vision was Wilhelm, or more correctly the upper half of Wilhelm. His cold and lifeless eyes were locked with hers as his torn and tattered body lay there motionless, his mouth slightly agape as the still warm blood that filled his veins leaked out both there and from the bottom of his chest cavity. His face was permanently frozen in an expression of melancholy, her speech had been unable to purge the poison from his heart and as a result he had spent his final moments of life as a broken man.

"So annoying….." She heard the depressed voice of Natsuki Suabru call out, or more correctly, the depressed voice of Hector, The Warlock of Melancholy.

Crusch did not have a firm knowledge of what the title 'Warlock' particularly conveyed, but she knew that it was nothing good for it bore stark similarities to the title of 'Witch'.

"To be put in somethings mouth like food is disgusting, its depressing, I hate it, I can't stand it… My heart can only sink so low thinking that I must exert myself even in the slightest to be reunited with her. I feel only more and more melancholy at the idea that I will need to try even in the slightest, this is truly the worst…" Hector slowly shambled into Crusch's vision behind Wilhelm as he placed his hand on against the mouth of the White Whale.

And in that moment everything was turned on its head.

The entire mouth of the whale quivered for a single instant before all hell broke loose. The mouth twisted in on itself as flesh was torn, bones broken, glands compacted, the very air itself became filled with a mixture of blood and particalized flesh.

Before Crusch knew what was happening she felt herself falling through the air as chunks of the whale's carcass rained down all around her. She saw a large horn fall by her on one side, on another an eye, and a little father away a giant slab of the whales hide billowed in the air; it appears that Hector had completely reduced the whale into nothing more then chunks of meat.

Crusch hit the ground hard on her left shoulder, feeling the pop and crunch as the socket was completely smashed to little bits by the impact. She felt a crack an instant latter as her head hit the ground, her vision instantly growing blurry but thankfully her body went numb with it, giving her a respite from the pain. This was a good thing as she would not have to feel the pain brought on by the sharp piece of tooth logged in her cutting the rest of the way through her, resulting in her lower half being held on by little more then a sliver of skin and muscle on her right side. She lay like this as a torrent of blood began to surge out of this massive wound, being joined by the droplets of whale blood that still rained down from the sky.

However she did not lay like this for more then a few seconds, the time it took for a certain demihuman healer to find her amidst the carnage.

He rushed to her side, his eyes growing wide and glassy as he saw the state that the most important person in his life was in, but thankfully for her he did not freeze up, for if he had she would have most certainly died.

With both his hands hovering over her body, emitting a blue light that was so bright and powerful that it might blind someone he dumped every last bit of mana he had into her body. She felt ever single fiber of her being quiver as it was overwhelmed by this electrifying power, her body being slowly dragged back from the gates of the land of the dead by the most powerful healing magician to ever live.

"Your eyes look so cloudy… don't leave Ferri-chan alone Crusch-sama….. Ferri-chan will mend your body even if it kills him, so don't stop fighting, not yet!" Ferris choked back tears as he set about his gruesome work of repairing a mortal wound, making her body fit to hold life again. One could say that it would have been more merciful if he had just waited a few seconds to let her pass, for injuries this gruesome leave behind more then just aesthetic scars.

---

Roswaal was elated, he felt a feeling that was indescribable, after 400 years he had finally completed the writ of the gospel that had been bestowed upon him by Echidna. As the corpse of the last of the three whales rained down, the corpse of the original and true whale, the one created by Daphne four centuries ago he removed the gospel from his robes and flipped through its pages.

A smile slowly drew its way across his face as he watched with exhilarated eyes as the words slowly faded off all the pages of the book, leaving them blank.

This day was truly the best day of his life, it was happiness without bounds.

But if there was to be one thing true in life, there is no happiness without sadness.

"I truly and utterly despise you Roswaaaaaaal, it brings nothing but sadness to know that in the end you must be my final obstacle." Hector's voice sailed through the air to reach Roswaal's ears as he emerged from an area littered with large chunks of the White Whale's corpse.

"Hector… You're too late, you cannot stop me, I've already completed the gospel's writ! Sensei will return to walk among the living and there is not a thing you can do to stop her, I need to do nought more then what I have done before, buy her the time she needs." Roswaal forced his body to adopt a combat position, his legs spread shoulder width apart, his remaining arm raised to direct magic.

"It irks me, hurts me that you think I would want nothing more then for her to return, it brings sadness into my heart for you to associate such poooooor ideas with me." Hector took a few more steps towards Roswaal before he stopped but a short distance from him, now all that separated them was a distance that either could close in an instance if they put their fullest effort into it. Yet Roswaal would not do such a thing for close combat was something he needed to avoid, and Hector refused to move with vigour regardless of the situation.

"You have hunted her, tried to hurt her, driven her to desperate measures in order to avoid her! Accept it Hector, regardless of what you say, when it comes to the topic of Echidna you cannot be seen in anything but a poor light!" Roswaal fired these accusations at Hector with clenched teeth and glaring eyes.

"Its depressing with how wrong you are, I want nothing more then to be reunited with my saviour, it depresses me with how she blames herself for what I've become while ignoring what she saved me from. It saddens me to see her be twisted by her own affliction as she desperately struggles it fend it off. It causes me only melancholy to see how you refuse to look past your infatuation with her to see how she suffers. That is why you are so annoying, why I despise you, you refuse to see that her greed is likely the only reason she ever met you, the only reason that she ever taught you, the only reason you've been deceived into undertaking a 400 year long quest." Hector laid out his intentions and reasoning with a voice utterly flat and without any emotion aside from melancholy, while Roswaal only grew more and more incensed as he heard each word.

"How could I ever trust a single word that came from the Warlock of Melancholy, you're deranged, delusional, no better than Vainglory! Sensei always told me that there was no reasoning nor understandable logic behind what you do, and if you think that I would give up on her wisdom, her infallible lessons that have led me all this time then you are wrong! If there's one thing that I know I must do at this point, its that I must stop you, delay you, no matter the cost! Of course I would love nothing more then to be reunited with Sensei, but in the end I can rest easy knowing that she will return. So Hector, Warlock of Melancholy, whether I win and am united with her, lose and be saved by her, or perish on this field, let it be known that Roswaal A Mathers was loyal to his sensei, Echidna, Witch of Greed, right to the end of the eleventh hour!"

And with this statement it became a certainty, a certainty that Hector, The Warlock of Melancholy and Roswaal A Mathers, The Disciple of the Witch of Greed would face of in combat one last time. Their battlefield would be one already stained by the blood of the first of the Great Mabeasts to die, the place where Hector had been saved by Echidna as a child, and the place where Roswaal had nearly met his end centuries ago.

Roswaal was the first to make his move, and it was a move that should have ended the fight against nearly any other opponent. He outstretched his left hand and six colourful balls began to float around it. With fire he wielded the passion that he had always held for his mission; with water the diligence to slowly work towards a task regardless of how long it took; with earth the stalwart determination to continue on no matter the setback he faced; with air the shrewdness to always find the way past any obstacle; with yin the willpower to endure his long separation from his sensei, and finally with yang the hope that they would be reunited one day.

With this he launched forth an attack fueled by both a massive amount of mana alongside the emotions that had held him through his four century long life, an attack that should have been able to fell nearly any opponent he could have ever believed he would face.

But unluckily for him Hector was among those that could survive such a massive and awe-inspiring display of magical prowess.

He should have been disintegrated, the explosion should have been so great that Roswaal should have been nearly killed by the back blast form it, if the area was not already completely ruined then it would have been. But his opponent was truly a monster.

The orbs of mana rocketed forward and burst into energy just as they should have once they reached him, but as the explosion of energy expanded, it suddenly stopped. The explosion that looked like it initially consumed Hector quivered, shivered, and shimmered, before it was flattened into the ground and dissipated as if it had never appeared in the first place.

"To force me to exert myself, to have to harness something more then a fragment of my power is annoying, applying effort itself hurts me, it makes me feel so sad, why must you do this to me over and over again. You make things so bad, so depressing, so melancholic…" Hector lamented as he began to slowly trudge towards Roswaal.

Roswaal began to back step in an effort to maintain the spacing between them as he conjured massive spears of ice in the air and flung them towards the advancing warlock.

But it did not matter in the slightest, as each one approached him it was shattered effortlessly midair without even the slightest reaction from Hector.

"So irritating…" Hector muttered as he continued his approach, and in that instant Roswaal collapsed to the ground wincing in pain, his knee reduced to mush as his leg collapsed in on itself, the result of Hector's first attack against him.

But Roswaal did not give up, mouthing the words "Al Dona" as the ground began to lift underneath Hector, but Hector just shook his head at this as he flattened all the ground around him with a stamp of his foot, reducing tiny pebbles to sand with the sheer amount of force he used.

Roswaal used his remaining leg to continue to try and push himself along the ground as he desperately flung spell after spell; he used water, air, fire, earth, even yang and yin, but in the end it did not matter in the slightest as not one managed to get through Hectors defences.

"You're really bringing me down with how you are dragging this out Roswaal… why must you do this to me, why must the world be so sad as to constantly subject me to this…" Hector lamented as he unleashed a flurry of attacks.

"I'm losing heart…" he said as Roswaal's other leg was crushed into a mess of torn flesh and shards of bone.

"I'm losing interest…." He lamented as he crushed Roswaal's abdomen, reducing his internal organs to a thick meat soup.

"Melancholy, melancholy is the only thing I can feel, the only thing I've felt for so long…. Melancholy and nothing else….." He said as he slammed Roswaal's ribcage with far more strength than he should have needed, flattening his chest as rib, lung and heart were reduced to nothing more then an unrecognizable flat mash.

The battle had ended as soon as it had begun, Roswaal A Mathers lay nearly motionless on the ground as he desperately clung to life, life that was rapidly seeping away from his body.

Hector slowly trudged the last few paces to arrive at the corpse of his fallen adversary, kneeling down and cradling his head in his hand as he looked him directly in the eye.

"It always brought sadness to see you knowing that the Witch of Greed had sacrificed and manipulated you just as she had done to I…. it seems you too were driven onto a path of melancholy by her insatiable greed…."

As those words left Hector's mouth and reached the ears of Roswaal he waited and watched, waited for a response as he watched the gears slowly turn behind Roswaal's eyes, but as the coughing and sputtering of blood continued he got no response, no response as he saw the light of life leave Roswaal, the glint leaving him as he finally experienced death.

"So depressing…." Was all Hector said as he stood up and began to walk towards the Sanctuary, towards the tomb of the one he wished to meet after long last, the one he had caused all this chaos for.

---

Why was he here, why did he have to come back after all this time, seeing him only brought melancholy into her life. It did nothing more then take her heart and try to wrench it free from where she had buried it, she absolutely hated being reminded of all the failures in her life, the times she had given into greed and completely and utterly ruined someone that she had come to care about.

And who was better at bring back those thoughts, feelings and memories then the first instance of her inability to resist her greed, Hector.

When she had first met him she had felt bad for him, felt empathetic at the misfortune he endured day in and day out, but she was also curious at how he managed to endure it like he did. She had learned from a book that even at a young an age as they were that such severe emotional trauma as what he experienced should have broken him, yet he was able to withstand it.

The curiosity had built and built until she decided that she had to find out, she had to know more then she could from simply watching him, and so she had chosen to approach him when she saw him sitting by a tree on a hill one day. They had talked for a long time and she had come to understand how he endured, he simply knew no joy in life, he had never known real happiness, nor did he expect it, life to him had always been and was expected to be melancholy.

But he was also one of the few people who seemingly had no issue conversing with her, he had absolutely no fear nor qualm with interacting with the Witch of Greed, something most people avoided simply because she was a being different then what they were. It meant that their conversations were things that she had come to enjoy, something she had come to look forward to, and slowly but surely her heart began to feel just ever so slightly different when they were together.

It would beat just the slightest bit faster when they were together and would ache in just the slightest bit when they were apart. She began to fall for the person that was ostracized by everyone just as she was, even if they did experience it to different extents as her knowledge was sought after by some.

Of course she knew that he held feelings for her that were similar to what she held for him, he wore them on his sleeve like he wore the rest of his emotions. And it was from this mutual bond that grew that her first scheme began to be plotted, an innocent one meant to deliver them both from the cruelty and indifference that characterized the society they lived in. Her scheming progressed farther and farther as she planned how they would skip town one night and seek out a place where they could both live in peace, but in order to do so she relied increasingly on the tomb granted to her by her authority.

She had never known her mother and had been a little girl when she was forced to raise herself after her father passed. But before he had died, he had given her a stern warning, to avoid reading and becoming lost in the tomb of wisdom like her mother had been, it would offer her everything she could desire, it could quench her endless curiosity, but her greed would grow uncontrollably the more she searched through it.

And it was this tomb that caused a thought to float through her head one day as she laid in bed, a question that she did not know the answer to, what happened to someone when they took in a witch factor? How did they change, what was the before and after like?

She had been born a witch, inheriting greed from her mother when she died during childbirth so she did not know from personal experience, leaving her only one place to turn to for the answer.

She quickly delved into the tomb she drew from thin air in search of answers, but it did not directly present her with any. Instead it gave her page after page of information about the compatibility between an individual and a witch factor, which although did partially answer her question, was nowhere near enough. However the last paragraph did contain something that caught her attention, the location of another witch factor that was close by, the witch factor of melancholy.

The dots instantly connected in her head, she knew someone who should have near perfect compatibility with it, Hector. But she instantly tried to push those thoughts from her head, she absolutely refuted the idea of using the only person she cared about as a lab rat, as a possible sacrifice to sate her curiosity.

But the idea kept gnawing at her, gnawing worse and worse as the thought grew stronger and stronger in her head. This continued until one day when she returned from dazzling some noble with some trivial healing magic after she had been hired to treat his heir in a place far from where she lived.

When she returned she waited for Hector to return from his day of work as she sat on the hill, but what she was greeted with tore her heart to pieces. She had always considered herself to be a fairly logical person, above sudden surges of emotion, but the sight of him being as badly hurt as he was, was too much for her. The sight bothered her so much, hurt her so badly that it sent her head and heart into a tailspin, she did not feel in control of herself any longer.

Even after she healed him, brought him back from what would have been his death bed if she had not arrived back when she did her emotional state did not get any better. When his pig of a father came to throw a fit, striking both of them she had to use ever last drop of willpower to avoid simply disintegrating him where he stood.

And it was then, in her moment of weakness that she could not rein in her greed, that it overflowed the meager walls that she had created to try and rein it in. The words flowed as naturally from her mouth as anything when she manipulated someone for the first time in her life, when she manipulated Hector into beginning the path that he had been walking for 400 years.

And now as she sat under an umbrella in the realm she had created, the castle of dreams she saw two beings shimmer into view. Both brought forth memories of her past, one was a monster of her creation the brought back regret and heartache, the other strongly evoked memories of a father figure she greatly respected, someone who managed to constantly teach things to someone who supposedly knew everything.

They may have shared a body back in the real world, but their souls were distinct and as a result they would appear and behave as distinct entities within the dream castle.

And now as she saw him, looking identical to how he did back when she had unleashed the barrier of Sanctuary at him like a weapon she felt like someone was driving a knife straight into her heart. It was this feeling alongside the regret that she had fled from for so long, fled from the sight of the face that used to light up when she saw it, being reduced to nothing more then a depressed mess, but now she had nowhere else she could flee.

"You don't appear to have changed since we last met, Hector…." It felt as if the very mention of his name burned her mouth as it left. However in contrast to her statement she did notice something different about him just after she said his name, his characteristic frown seemed to disappear, and turn into a slight smile.

He walked towards her, not with his normal dreary trudge but instead with strong strides, strides filled with vigour and determination.

She stood up, she had to be prepared to fight him in case he tried anything, she may not have a good chance of winning, but she would not simply give up, she would not roll over and die after all this time, she would not give in to an insane maniac who acted irrationally and without any kind of control whatsoever.

But the man that walked towards her bore no resemblance to the monster she had twisted the boy she had fallen for into, instead he reminded her of the boy who would happily find the energy to run up the hill to meet her after a long day of hard labour.

She wanted to gather the mana to launch an attack at him, pull down a sky full of stars to hopefully smash him into a paste, or send forth a beam of energy strong enough to burn him to cinders. But she could not do such a thing as the monster she wanted to target was not present, and to a certain extent he never had been. Hector had been turned into a monster by her, but she had only told herself lies that the original person was gone forever when in truth he had been buried beneath a sea of depression, still managing to pull the strigs he needed to from the bottom of that ocean.

She had told herself this to make it easier to run from all the regret she had, to make it easier to tell herself to bury her emotions and live life with only greed. She had always known what he truly wanted as he chased her for so long, but she had seen herself as nothing but a monster, far worse than him and thought it would be unfair to him to even entertain the idea of accepting forgiveness.

She was pulled from these thoughts when he stopped a mere pace from where she stood, her defences fallen as she could not bring herself to hurt him anymore then she already had. At this point if he decided to exact his vengeance he could just reach out and touch her, twist and break her body into an unnatural shape and watch her die.

And that's exactly what he did.

Hector reached out towards Echidna with both arms, her eyes clamped shut as she could not bring herself to look at him any longer.

But instead of placing his hands on her shoulders and reducing her to a mangled mess, they reached around her back and pulled her into a tight embrace instead.

Her eyes shot wide open as she felt this, it seemed like forgiveness, something she did not think she deserved, something she refused to receive as she looked out emptily across the grassy plain that was her castle.

Her arms hung limply at her sides as she slowly noticed the 5 other residents of the castle manifest themselves, taking on a physical form so they too could seemingly witness this long-awaited reunion.

"Why…why don't you hate me….YOU SHOULD HATE ME!" Echidna choked out as her eyes began to grow glassy before she began to scream.

"So it seems that even the allllllll knowing Echidna has to learn something every once and a while." Hector said in a voice quivering yet full of happiness.

"What is there to learn from this, you have every right to hate me, every right to despise me, yet you refuse to do so! That's shows that you are simply delusional, and there is nothing more to it…." Echidna began to cry as she spoke, her voice growing weaker and weaker with each word that she said, it hurt her to insult him like this.

"The girl who saved me is still in there, she's here with me right now, and I will forgive her for everything because I still love her after all these years." Hector whispered this into her ear and it sent her spiraling, but not in the way she did on the hill all those years ago when she made her mistake.

For the first time in forever she felt her heart beat begin to rise once again, she saw all the memories of their past flash before her eyes, not because she regretted ruining them, but because of how much she enjoyed them, of how much she loved them.

She returned his embrace, and in a first the Witch of Greed and the Warlock of Melancholy were joined in a tight embrace, something that had never had the opportunity to do in all the time they knew each other, it was an experience that had been stolen from them by the paths they had been unwittingly driven down.

She felt the muscles in the side of his face tighten as he broke out into a massive smile, her own doing the same, she felt her hair grow slightly damp as tears began to flow from his eyes to match her own.

"This makes everything worth it, every year and every sacrifice was worth it for this moment. It would bring nothing but joy to my heart if it could last forever." Hector hugged her even tighter as he said this, his voice breaking as the tears began to flow ever so slightly faster from his eyes.

"It can, without a body you can stay here forever, it can be just like we always wanted, a life with nothing to disrupt it. You and I, together forever." She felt the happiest had in a long time, pure joy and bliss as she too wished that this moment would continue on indefinitely.

"I'm sorry Echidna" was all he said to her in a voice that held a precarious juxtaposition of being full of both regret and a deep happiness at the same time.

At first she did not understand, but as she gradually clued back into her surroundings she understood what he meant, and it broke her recently repaired heart into more pieces then it had ever been in.

She began to hear the sobbing, coming not from Hector but from the boy behind him as he lay on the ground in a fetal position.

She noticed Typhon standing above his head, calling out "Who hurt Flü-Flü, tell me who hurt you and I will make them pay!" as she scanned around, searching for the perpetrator that brought sadness to the man that had stood in as her father.

She saw Sekhmet trying desperately to calm Typhon down before a certain someone heard her.

And then she noticed that the sky had grown dark in a place where it was eternally daytime.

"You hurt him You hurt him You hurt him You hurt him You hurt him You hurt him You hurt him You hurt him You hurt him You hurt him You hurt him You hurt him You hurt him You hurt him You hurt him You hurt him You hurt him You hurt him You hurt him You hurt him You hurt him You hurt him You hurt him You hurt him You hurt him You hurt him You hurt him You hurt him You hurt him You hurt him You hurt him" Chanted a soft bell like voice from behind her as shadows began to swirl at their feet.

"It seems my time has finally run out, our reunion wasn't long enough, but then again I doubt any amount of time would have been enough…." Hector's voice was full of regret but also acceptance as he released Echidna from his embrace, a gently removed her arms from around him.

The second he did this she instantly spun around and placed herself between him and the Witch of Envy, spreading her arms out as if they could shield him from the harm that envy would try and exact upon him.

But Hector just stepped around her as he gently pushed one of her arms back to her side.

"There's nowhere to run from her, we cannot fight her, its better to just get this over with. To me death is a worthy price to pay to truly see you one last time, I can have a happy ending that I don't regret in the slightest." Hector said as he spread his arms out, showing the Witch of Envy that he did not intend to resist in the slightest as she exacted her vengeance.

Echidna wanted to call out to him, to scream that she was not happy with things ending like this, but she did not get the chance.

A jolt went through his body as his chest was penetrated by over a dozen spikes made of shadow, going limp as he fell, only to be caught in her arms.

As the Witch of Envy walked past the two in order to go towards the person who had joined Hector when he arrived here, Hector looked up at Echidna and flashed her a weak smile.

"….. love you" Were the words he barely got out before he faded away to nothing, his spirit destroyed, never to return.

And Echidna broke and began to sob at the sight of this.

It was not long enough, it was nowhere near enough time, not after things had been so broken between them for so long.

Just as they had been reunited, they were now separated, and this time there was no hope that they would ever meet again.

It was at this point that the Castle of Dreams began to grow white, everything began to shimmer and fade as its physical representation broke down, reducing it to nothing more then a vessel of souls.

The only sounds that could be heard as this happened were Echidna's sobbing and this Witch of Envy desperately chanting "I love you" over and over again as she pulled a broken and sobbing boy to her chest.

The souls of the slain witches would remain here alongside Echidna's, the souls of the boy and the Witch of Envy would be returned to their physical bodies, and Hector's would have already begun its journey towards the Od Laguna where it would be scrubbed of its memories and be reborn as a new person with no recollection or connection to its past.