Too many...There have been too many. I just can't do this any more.
Ivy was at her limit. She ran down the corridor at top speed. She had wanted to repay Nightmare for helping her create the Ivy Blade, and so she had helped him in his quest to resurrect his father. However, 'helping' Nightmare had consisted of killing - senseless killing. Nightmare, his allies, and herself had killed hundreds of innocent victims, one after another - looking back on it, it all seemed like one endless massacre. Some of those whom they had killed had been no more than devoted souls seeking the truth - and, all the while, the monstrous eye of Nightmare's bizarre sword had almost seemed to smile in satisfaction.
Now, she had seen too much. Too many. Too many victims just for one resurrection. In desperation, she searched for a deeper meaning to justify her actions. What was the true purpose of these tragedies? This question raced through her mind with frequency, but never bore any answer.
She loathed the vile beasts that had carried out these massacres like cold executioners.
She was sure that the bloodthirsty giant Astaroth enjoyed the slaughtering, and the beast deemed Lizardman was clearly not a creature from the earth. Its eyes bore no emotion despite its heartless acts. Moreover, everyone, including Nightmare, seemed to be plotting something terrible.
I just can't help it anymore. I've got to get out of here.
And, so, driven nearly to madness from the guilt of the countless sins she had committed while merely trying to help one whom had helped her, Ivy ran. She ran as fast as she could, and her only destination was away from the wretched castle she was in. A monster stood watch at the back gate of the castle, so she had to find another way out that would also allow her to avoid detection. The castle had a number of unusual architectural features, such as hidden staircases leading to secret rooms, rare amethyst-glass windows, and unexpected gables. Ivy had chosen a secret underground passage for her escape.
In the dark narrow isle, however, she felt uneasy - as if the eye of Nightmare's sword was gazing upon her at that very moment. To her relief, in the distance, she saw the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel, and her steps quickened. She finally exited the long, dark corridor, a cold blast of air hitting her in the face as she emerged onto the defensive walls of the castle. However, she was not relieved to be out of the tunnel - for there were others waiting for her there. Who stood before her was none other than Astaroth and his clay golem subordinates. They all glared at her like she was a criminal...no - like she was prey.
It was Astaroth who broke the silence. "Hm..." The golem said, as if in thought - but his tone was sarcastic, and did not imply curiosity in the least. "How strange...that you are using an underground passage. Might I ask where you are going in such a hurry...Madam Valentine?" His last two words dripped with mockery. He wore a mask across the bottom of his face, covering his mouth, but creases in the mask revealed that he was smirking.
"I'm leaving." Ivy replied simply. "I will no longer hold company with brutal creatures like you. I'm going now, to complete my own quest."
Upon hearing her words, Astaroth burst into a fit of roaring laughter. "HA HA HA! ...You stupid bitch!" He spat at her. "The object of your quest, Soul Edge, has sat in front, of you all this time! Didn't you feel anything when you gazed upon the eye?"
...W...What did he say? That Nightmare's sword is...Soul Edge? ...I felt an evil aura from the blade, but that was not proof enough for me to call it Soul Edge. Above all, if it were Soul Edge, he would have never let me, who wants to destroy the blade, near him. ...Or, maybe he thought that I was no threat to him because I am a mere woman...
"...Of course, I could not care less." The golem spat. Besides - the time is fast approaching. Now, you will devote your soul to the blade!"
Quickly dodging a sudden attack from the giant's axe, Ivy leapt a few feet back and drew her Ivy Blade.
"You are a spare host, I've heard!" Astaroth said with such confidence that it seemed as if he knew everything.
A spare host? What could that mean? That Nightmare had kept Ivy around to serve as a potential replacement for himself, should he fall? Suddenly, everything fell into place. Soul Edge was manipulating everyone - it had used Astaroth and Lizardman as its 'hands' to recover its strength with no risk to itself or its host. And Nightmare's final plan could only be to have the evil blade eat the souls of Astaroth and Lizardman!
Ivy was stunned for a moment with this thought, and Astaroth seized the opportunity that her hesitation provided. The giant's blade was already coming down on her head when she had regained her mental focus. Narrowly, she dodged the axe's blade, but the hilt slammed her against the wall. Astaroth stood in front of a defeated Ivy, and smiled.
Suddenly, the clay golems behind him became noisy.
"...What's happening?"
The golems continued to chatter.
"...Three strong souls approach? Hm...This is a good thing. A good thing, indeed..." Upon his subordinates' report, Astaroth turned his back to Ivy, and began to leave. Ivy slowly hoisted herself back up.
"What? Running away? I can't let you go! Tell me what you meant when you said-"
"Sorry." Astaroth interrupted her in a tone that implied anything but apology. He spoke to her without stopping or turning around. "I'm leaving for a more...productive hunt. Ha! But, worry not! These golems will finish my work and take your soul for the blade."
The giant left, and the clay golems all lunged at Ivy at once.
---
A breathless Ivy stood in a pool of melted clay. Her beautiful face and body were covered in mud, her strength was gone, and her consciousness fading. Desperately, she made her way back to the passage. She refused to believe Astaroth's words, and needed to talk with Nightmare directly.
"Stop, child of the evil sword!"
The voice that had rung out was that of a young woman, and came from behind Ivy.
As Ivy looked back, she saw an Asian woman in strange clothing standing at the entrance of the corridor. Ivy hadn't been aware of the woman's presence, and didn't know how long she had been nearby. With her last bit of strength, Ivy brandished her blade to prepare for a possible battle, but the woman stopped her attack with a short sword drawn from her waist. In the moment the blades clashed, Ivy Blade wreathed on the short sword, and began to shed a dark and evil aura. Affected by the dark aura, the trees surrounding them groaned in pain. Ivy and the Asian woman stumbled back.
"...What? What was that?" Ivy muttered, puzzled.
"My sword bears a crack delivered to it by Soul Edge." Said the woman. "Your sword resonates with mine...it could only be a product of Soul Edge itself."
"A product of that evil sword...so...so it's true..." Ivy looked down at her blade. It had, indeed, been completed with the power of Soul Edge. ...How stupid I am...I, who, in order to destroy Soul Edge, entrusted the very power of that evil sword itself...
"...One more fact." The Asian woman spoke. "The blood of the evil blade runs in your veins, as well."
The woman had now called not only her blade the child of the evil sword, but Ivy as well. "...What?"
"Once, I fought with a man who bore an aura similar to yours. That man was the previous owner of the evil sword. This has been an interesting encounter, but I may not stay. Farewell." The woman jumped back onto the ramparts, and then quickly left to attend to her own business.
"Wai...wait! What do you mean? ...Do you mean that my true father is...!"
...Captain Cervantes De Leon, the immortal pirate?
The woman had never said the name, but Cervantes had been the previous owner of the sword. Dumbfounded by the revelations that had occurred in the past few minutes, Ivy stared blankly at the rampart where the woman once stood.
Her state of shock was shattered when she heard a heavy noise from inside the castle. Those three trespassers must have been more than Astaroth had expected. Ivy drew her exhausted body toward the dark castle once more - this time with a new will.
...If this is true...then I will cut Nightmare to pieces.
Knowing that she had been deceived was the only power that moved her now.
---
Nightmare was dead...but not by Ivy's hand. She hadn't even been able to see who killed him, or how - the battle was long over and all participants were long gone by the time she had reached the spot where it had taken place. Despite the death of the demon, her blade still held the breath of life. But, now, the its undead life had a different source...
...The cursed blood running through Ivy's body.
---
Valentine Mansion is a sad sight indeed to those who beheld it. The Valentine family was one of the most famous and rich families in all of Europe. However, the master of the mansion, Count Valentine, was a man obsessed with a mystery, and his obsession drove the family into despair. He died in madness, and by the time of his death, he had squandered both his family's reputation and fortunes, leaving one of London's most distinguished families in ruins. The famous Valentine family was destroyed in a single generation. Most regard the dark and abandoned Valentine mansion and its deceased mad count with pity.
However, a light flickers in one corner of the building, for the old mansion still has one inhabitant - Isabella Valentine.
Isabella Valentine was raised with love as the daughter of the noble English Valentine family. As if to pursue her husband into death, the Countess fell dreadfully ill and passed away soon after Count Valentine's death. This left Ivy as the sole surviving member of the Valentine family.
On her deathbed, her tender mother revealed to Ivy a secret that her parents had kept from her for many years - in reality, Ivy was not a true Valentine by birth. The Count and Countess had found her abandoned in front of their mansion when she was an infant, and she was taken into the family as an adopted child. However, Ivy was too devastated with remorse to care about her "true parents" - she would forever consider the Valentines her parents, by birth or not.
As she was collecting her parents' possessions, she discovered her father's diary. In the diary, she finally found out exactly what it was that the count had become obsessed with - Soul Edge - a weapon known as the "Key to Eternal Youth." He had become a practitioner of alchemy in order to pursue the sword. When Ivy learned that her father had given up his life in pursuit of the sword, something in her mind snapped.
My father was driven mad by such a loathsome thing...This...this evil sword! Her newfound despair and rage gave her a new goal in life - to destroy the sword, and cleanse the Valentine name.
To destroy the evil sword, she needed an even more powerful weapon. Ivy researched countless weapons to find one that was suitable for her quest to destroy Soul Edge. In the end, she was unsatisfied with all of her choices - and made the decision to create her own unique weapon, instead.
An Asian multi-segmented whip intrigued her, and she formulated an idea for a weapon that could change its shape back and forth from sword to whip. Every drop of her intellect and skill was poured into countless prototypes before she finally perfected her weapon – the "Snake Sword." She named her own specific Snake Sword the Ivy Blade. It was an incredible weapon, and was just as she had envisioned it - it had the ability to expand and contract at will. However, as amazing an achievement as it was, in Ivy's eyes, the weapon was merely a lifeless tool that could only change its shape mechanically; it could never defeat a living demonic blade. In order to use her weapon's true potential, it needed to live, as well.
She tried everything she could think of to bring the sword to life, even giving it her own blood to the sword. Once she found her understanding of alchemy useless, she began to explore ancient sorcery, and repeated summoning rituals every midnight. But, just like her father, she lost her temper, and struggled with rage. One night, her desperate desire finally summoned a malformed arm into the summoning gate. Isabella stared blankly at the arm, as it sensed her attachment to her beloved sword, and fused itself to it. Then, a voice without sound uttered, "I, Cross of the Pledge, shall confer onto thee the Point in the Escutcheon of Destruction - Dexter Purpure." The being disappeared, and the ceremony ended. Under frozen moonlight, the embodiment of Isabella's insanity, her Ivy Blade, cracked and twisted as it became something unholy.
Her sword was alive - completed, beyond her wildest dreams! It was now that she finally saw herself fit to embark on a journey to destroy Soul Edge. A warrior with a strong drive to find Soul Edge and the wielder of Soul Edge itself were practically fated to meet - and meet they did. Ivy came across Nightmare, but, at the time, Ivy did not know that the bizarre blade Nightmare wielded was, in fact, Soul Edge. Because of his malformed arm, she did, however, recognize him as the 'voice without sound' whom had breathed life into her sword, and, feeling a debt to him, agreed to assist him in the resurrection of his father, the entire time blind to the fact that he wielded Soul Edge.
Shaken by the horrifying truths she learned at Ostrheinsburg Castle, Ivy returned home and locked herself away in her dark laboratory. She was filled with self-hatred and regret, and with nothing to channel her dark feelings into, she turned her hatred to her Ivy Blade, now seeing it as a symbol of her failures. She tried countless times to destroy the weapon, but she could never bring herself to actually break the sword. I am the same as this sword...yes, the blood of the evil blade flows through me. The same blood...
The Ivy Blade itself did nothing but wait for its master's orders silently.
Slipping into the darkest point in her entire life, Ivy holed herself up in her laboratory for months upon months. However, Ivy spent these months productively, soul searching and rethinking her life. When Ivy finally emerged from her laboratory, she was like a butterfly emerging from a cocoon - she was now a new person with a renewed resolve. Her desire was now to completely wipe Soul Edge out of existence. As a vow to her commitment, she renamed the Ivy Blade "Valentine." And, when she acquired information about fragments of Soul Edge being scattered throughout the world, she immediately departed on her new journey.
Ivy intended to destroy every fragment of Soul Edge, anyone who carried its tainted bloodline, and anyone contaminated by its evil - even if it meant eventually ending her own life, as well. She had come to learn that there would be no hope for those seduced by the sword - no cure besides death. Her resolution would result in spilled blood, both guilty and innocent; but nothing could sway her determination. Nothing would stop her from destroying the root of the evil. The only thing that mattered was obliterating the evil sword's existence completely. Call me a monster, a demon if you must. I'll be happy to be called those names if it is the price I must pay to eliminate the existence of the evil blade!
Over the course of her journey, Ivy's sword had begun to change. It was unstable. She decided to return to her alchemy lab in order to investigate this. Once there, she would have access to her equipment. On the way home, she stopped into a certain academic English town. There, she bought some books about the secret arts. Both old and new books, gathered one place - a goldmine to one such as herself. When she returned home, she looked through the books she had bought. One of them stood out. Amazingly, it thoroughly revealed the nature of Soul Edge. As far as she knew, this was the most detailed information ever gathered on the subject. As she deciphered the ancient text, she discovered information concerning a related sword - Soul Calibur. It was a sword that restrained the power of the evil sword, and fought against it. This seemed almost too good to be true, but the precise nature of the text didn't seem to be fiction.
Over the course of a month, Ivy discovered every detail about the sword. The thought that it existed excited her. She closed her eyes in contemplation, and began to think. The alchemist had not slept in several nights, and with her eyes closed, she began to drift into the seductive embrace of slumber...
---
It was some time into the night when Ivy suddenly awoke with a start. She had been having a nightmare - a dream recalling the events of that fateful night when she'd learned so many things at once, and had her entire world seemingly collapse. It was a night she revisited in her dreams every few months - as if she was not allowing herself to forget what had happened. She rubbed her eyes, trying to wake herself up - but what made her more alert was the sound of heavy footsteps echoing in the hallway. What? An intruder, in my mansion? The footsteps grew louder as they approached her, and the surreal experience made Ivy wonder if she was still dreaming.
The door to her laboratory slowly opened, creaking as it did so. A man stepped through the doorway, and into the room. He was tall, and cloaked in a white robe. His skin was dark brown, and his face was stern...it was the look of the people who lived in the south. One more remarkable fact about him was that he had a golden orb sitting in his left eye socket.
"Who are you?" Ivy demanded of the man in a firm tone.
"Did you read the book?"
The voice that the man responded with was quiet and calm - but the tone it carried was cold. The two of them stared at one another, each as silent as death. They looked into one another's eyes, each awaiting a reply from the other, but neither receiving anything but a cold glare. However, it was in this silence that they both learned the answers to their respective questions.
Ivy instinctively reached for her still-unstable Ivy Blade with one hand, and grabbed the book with her other hand. The man produced a scythe - seemingly from out of nowhere, most likely using some form of concealing magic. We're really going to have to fight. I don't want to do this, being tired and with an unstable weapon, but he's an intruder, and if he seeks to take this book from me, I cannot allow it.
A fierce battle ensued in the form of a flurry of clashing steel. The man swung his scythe, striking very precise strikes, but Ivy was able to deflect them all. However, she had to concentrate harder than usual to control her sword. This slight distraction gave the man an opening, and he slammed the shaft of his scythe against her. Ivy was knocked back by the force of the blow. She dropped the book, and the man picked it up.
"...This...is a mistake from my past." The man muttered to himself in his calm, cold voice. "The world no longer needs this..."
While in his hands, the book suddenly burst into flames. He dropped it onto the floor. The book burnt to ash in mere seconds, but the flames did not spread. Ivy noted the man's magical prowess, but did not give up.
"Stop!" Ivy shouted, and began to rise. The man extended his arm towards Ivy, and made several gestures with his hand. As he did so, a dark aura surrounded his hand, and Ivy felt as if something was holding her down - she could not rise. With Ivy bound to the floor by the man's spell, he stood above her. He raised his scythe above his head, and for a moment, as the man was silhouetted by the light behind him, appearing pitch black to her, Ivy thought that she was beholding Death himself. However, the man slowly lowered his scythe.
"...No...there is use for this one yet." He muttered slowly, and a grin formed upon his face. Ivy's eyes grew wide, and she watched the man anxiously, in fear of what he might be considering. Finally, the man spoke. "...Child of Soul Edge, I have news for you. Nightmare cometh."
Ivy's eyes flew wide open. "Night...Nightmare? What?"
"Tell me. Do you wish to learn everything there is to know about the cursed sword and the spirit sword?"
Ivy merely watched the man uncertainly with suspicious eyes. "...Y...Yes." She finally answered.
"Nightmare has been resurrected, and is on his way here. He fears you, and seeks to kill you. If you can manage to defeat him, then all of the knowledge you seek will be yours. A word of warning: Nightmare may appear human, but, no matter how he seems, what he says, or what he does, he is Nightmare all the same. He fooled you once; don't let him fool you again." With these words, the man slowly began to move backwards. Ivy looked at his feet, and saw that he was not walking. He was simply sliding backwards. He slipped into some shadows, and then seemed to melt into them, until he was simply gone - vanished.
After staring at the spot where he had dematerialized in shock, and then realizing that the mysterious force pinning her to the ground was gone, Ivy scrambled to her feet. Ivy looked into the darkness once more, this time not in shock, but in thought.
She had lost the book, but its contents were etched into her memory. And, although she felt pure hatred for this enigma of a man who had intruded into her laboratory, defeated her, and destroyed the book...she knew his words to be true. A feeling of dread washed over her as she realized that, however weakly, she could sense the presence of Nightmare - he was, indeed, in the world again...and he was approaching. Coming for her.
Ivy considered the man's words. He had known that she'd read the book, known that she was a 'child' of Soul Edge, and known that Nightmare was resurrected. His words, then, were most likely true...
...It was decided, then. She would prepare herself for battle - the battle of her life. She would extract her revenge upon Nightmare, and obtain the knowledge she sought at the same time. And, after finding out the truth about Soul Calibur, she would obtain it for herself, and smite Soul Edge forever!