The Twenty-Fifth Knight

Chapter Twenty Seven

380 HEC, Twenty Fifth day of the Fifth month

Quinella simply smirked. "Well, it's about time," she said, and Cardinal nodded.

"It is indeed."

Quinella sighed in an exaggerated fashion. "Yes… I knew that if I tormented these children long enough, sooner or later you'd emerge from your musty old hole…"

Cardinal huffed. "Time has been very kind to you. If I didn't know better, you could almost pass for human," she said with a grin.

"My my, how cavalier you've become! You were nothing like this the last time we met, little one," Quinella replied. The Pontifex still floated high above her foes, lording her dominance over them like a goddess. "How timid you were back then. Why, when you stood before me two centuries ago, your teeth could stop chattering… Don't you remember… Lyserith?"

Cardinal suddenly tensed up, and her eyes narrowed to a point as she stared daggers at the Pontifex. "Do not call me by that name, Quinella! I am Cardinal, a program with one directive: deleting you!" she exclaimed in anger.

Quinella giggled. "That's right, you are," she said with a curt smile. "However my name is Administrator, and my directive is to manage all programs. I'm sorry it took so long for us to meet again though. I was perfecting a new sacred art to welcome you, and finishing it took longer than anticipated."

Quinella stretched her hand up, and black-purple lightning arced down her arm. Suddenly, there was a deafening explosion that shattered the glass along the walls, and a black, void-like orb formed around the top floor of the Cathedral.

All six of Quinella's foes gasped in shock, and Cardinal was the first to turn back to Quinella. "Damn you… you've cut the address loose!"

Quinella simply shrugged in response. "Well, I came so close to catching you two hundred years ago, I didn't want to lose you again… I've learned from my mistakes, dear Lyserith. I knew that once you crossed over to this side and abandoned your little collection of dusty old tomes, I could trap you here." She snapped her fingers, destroying the levitating disk and along with it, Cardinal's doorway. "Just like a little mouse in the same cage as a cat."

"At this time it isn't yet clear which of us is the mouse, and who is the cat. You've trapped yourself here too," Cardinal pointed out, and Quinella looked around, feigning surprise and confusion.

"Yes, I suppose you have a point there. But you're still outmatched," she replied, causing the rebels to narrow their eyes in bewilderment.

"Tell me, Quinella," Mateo asked. "How are we outmatched? There are six of us and only one of you. Surely you're not so arrogant as to believe you can still beat those odds, right?"

Laughter filled the room as Quinella spun backward in the air. "Oh, that's truly adorable, Mateo Synthesis Twenty Five," she said, using the name she'd bestowed to him as a means of angering the boy. "Six against one, right? Is that what you said?" With a wave of her hand, the Sword Golem stood up like it hadn't taken a single hit. The six rebels gasped in shock. "I think you'll find that to be a little more than slightly inaccurate."

"What?!" Cardinal gasped. "But how?"

"In fact, and mind you this doesn't include me, the odds are closer to six against three hundred," corrected Quinella with a sly grin. The others looked around in confusion, expecting to see more heads like the senators emerge from the walls, but none appeared.

"What is she referring to? It's got to be the senators… right?" Eugeo wondered as his eyes drifted around the room looking for an answer.

"Three hundred… what?" Kirito muttered before the answer hit him. "No… You didn't…"

Clearly, Cardinal had come to the same conclusion as him. "You vile monster… is there truly no limit to your depravity? Your duty is to protect your subjects from harm, but you turn them into… this!"

"Wait- Subjects?!" Eugeo exclaimed, staring at the Sword Golem. "That thing is…"

Alice, Mateo, and Katherine gazed at the mechanical nightmare in front of them. "Then that thing at its core… is human?!" Alice realized, and Mateo and Katherine both paled.

"No way… Is it even possible for one to be that twisted?" Katherine mentally asked, but the truth was right in front of her.

But to their horror, the Pontifex laughed off the accusations with an evil grin. "Oh, you say such silly things, like trifles such as duties, and subjects to protect," she mocked. "No, I am not bound by such trivialities. I am a conqueror, thus I have no problem as long as whatever I rule over remains subservient to me, and obeys my will. Whether they be human or sword, bird or fish, living or dead, it matters not to me."

Cardinal snarled at her. "You… you horrid-" she started to say, but the cackling pontifex cut her off.

"Oh, don't tell me you really didn't see this coming. You, Lyserith, of all people, should've known I'd have no qualms against using something like matter conversion on human units. Besides, I don't know what you're getting so worked up over, after all what you see now is only the result of a meager three hundred, give or take," Quinella said, before looking back at the Golem behind her. "Although, I guess you'd be upset at the fact that I plan to make many more of these puppets."

Mateo's jaw dropped in horror. "More?! How many?!" he exclaimed, and the Pontifex glanced over at him.

"Oh, probably around half," she answered.

The six rebels narrowed their eyes in worry. Aside from Kirito, all of them knew firsthand the lengths the Pontifex would go to to achieve her goals, and her ambition knew no bounds. "Half? Half of what?" Cardinal asked, fearing the answer.

Quinella looked down on them again. "Why naturally, half of the eighty-thousand human units living in the Human Empire right now," she said, resting her chin on her palm. "Yes, I think that amount should be enough. Enough at least to repel the armies of the Dark Territory, and to take the fight back to their side," she added, nodding. Then, she looked over at Alice. "Well? Does that allay your fears, little Alice? You can rest easy, knowing that your precious Human Empire will be very well protected. What's left, anyway."

Alice's gaze darkened in a mix of disgust, anger, and disappointment. "It is clear that nothing I say will sway you now, madam Pontifex. So instead, I ask you as a fellow wielder of the Sacred arts, I would like to know where the owners of the thirty swords you fashioned that monstrosity out of are," she said, before looking back up at Quinella. "As Mateo has proven time and again, it is possible to flout the rule allowing perfect control over no more than a single weapon, however difficult it may be. However, Pontifex or not, there is no way you can break the next: In order to enact memory release, there must be a strong enough bond between the weapon and it's wielder."

Alice then slammed her sword into the ground. "Pontifex!" she shouted with vigor and determination. "If you truly used innocent humans as the base from which that monstrosity was forged, there is no way that they would ever form a bond with you!"

However, Quinella was not phased in the slightest by her words. Instead, she simply looked up to the ceiling. "Believe it or not, the explanation is right in front of you. In fact, Eugeo seems to have already figured it out."

The others glanced over at Eugeo, who was frozen in place, his eyes wide with alarm. "No… No, it can't be!" he breathed.

"What? What is it, Eugeo?" Kirito asked, looking up at the ceiling but unable to figure out what was so shocking to him.

"See the crystals in the ceiling? They're not just decorations… they're what Quinella stole from the knights with the synthesis ritual. Those are their memories!" he exclaimed in disbelief, and as if to confirm his suspicions, he noticed an empty socket in the wall. It was the very same socket where Katherine's memories had once been hidden away.

All of them gasped as they realized that he was right. As Mateo looked around the ceiling, he couldn't help but feel a sense of nostalgia coming from one of the crystals embedded near the mural of Terraria. Now, he knew why. Those were his memories from almost a decade prior.

"Curse you, Quinella! You've gone too far in your fiendish manipulation of the humans!" Cardinal reprimanded her. "You placed the memory fragments you stole into mental modules on fresh light cubes, allowing them to think human thoughts. And though their intelligence would be limited enough to prevent them from activating a complex spell, such as perfect weapon control, you could in theory get around this issue by ensuring that the memory fragment and the weapon it is bonded with share the same structural data!" she explained. "Quinella, you evil witch! That is what your titan is made of, isn't it? The memories of the people these knights once held so dear, isn't that right?!"

The Pontifex confirmed Cardinal's guess with a simple flick of her head. She went back to curling a strand of hair with her finger as if she were bored of this confrontation. "These artificial personas desire but one thing: to find the one they remember, to hold them, touch them, and possess them. It is that unseemly desire which courses through my puppet, and provides its motivation," she said. "They sense that the ones they seek are close, but no matter how hard they try, they can never again be one with them. Still, they keep trying, because they have but that one singular desire, and it is a most powerful desire inde-"

"You're wrong!" Cardinal shouted, and for once, Quinella briefly seemed to be taken aback, as if she hadn't expected the librarian to cut her off. "Don't you dare tarnish that emotion by calling it desire! What they feel is… is pure love!"

Quinella folded her hands behind her back. "Well, now you're just splitting hairs," she said, before spinning in the air to float behind the golem. "Love is control, and love is desire. Either way, it is just a signal produced by a fluctlight, and nothing more. And this brings us to an even more delicious revelation," she said with an evil smirk. "Little Lyserith, now that you know about this puppet's true origins, there is something that you know just as well as I do. You, Lyserith, cannot harm this creature, for each of its blades is a living human being that has been transformed into a sword!"

Cardinal gasped, and she knew the Pontifex was right. Her staff dropped to her side in defeat. "You… you are right. I cannot hurt a human. I've spent two hundred years honing an art to kill you and your inhuman form… but in the end, it was all for nothing."

Hearing this, Quinella began to giggle, and then she began to laugh. "Oh, you are such a fool! Truly, it is both the funniest and the most tragic thing I've ever seen!" she mocked the girl. "You knew that all life in this world was just a collection of data just waiting to be rewritten, but you still chose to treat it as human, and for what? Your own moral compass?" she asked, and Cardinal gripped her staff in anger.

"Yes, I did, and I'd make that choice again and again because they are human! They possess the emotions we lost so long ago! They can feel joy, hope, sadness, love, and more! That right there is enough to make them human!" she countered, and with that, she threw her staff to the side. "I will let you take my life!" she exclaimed, causing her allies to gasp in shock. "But first, I want your word that you will spare these young ones!"

"No…"

That single word echoed in Mateo's mind over and over when he heard Cardinal's deal. He didn't know when he stepped forward, but once he did, he couldn't stop if he wanted to. "No," he said aloud, and both the Pontifex and Cardinal looked back at him as he stepped up behind his Librarian comrade. "I won't let this happen."

Quinella smirked. "Oh, you won't, will you? And how, pray tell, do you plan to defeat my fearsome puppet without the aid of your most powerful ally? As she said, she cannot hurt another human," she asked, but Mateo looked up with a grin.

"You're right, Cardinal can't hurt another human… But you are not human, and me, Katherine, Alice, Eugeo, and Kirito… we are not bound by the innate rules that Cardinal is!" he exclaimed, pointing his now brightly flaming blade at the Golem. As if to prove his point, a large fireball shot out of the tip and exploded against the titan, leaving a black burn mark where it had hit. Quinella frowned.

"Maybe so, but do not forget that this creation of mine was able to dispatch three of you with a single blow," she pointed out. "Do you really think you can defeat my puppet without suffering a single hit?"

Mateo narrowed his eyes. "It doesn't matter how much pain we must endure, or how great and terrible our wounds may be… we have the willpower to keep fighting, to push ourselves up and keep fighting every single time!" he shot back. Alice, Kirito, Katherine, and Eugeo all walked up and stood beside him in agreement. They would all fight together. They would destroy the Pontifex and her mechanical nightmare, or they would die trying. But no matter what, they would not flee.

Cardinal's eyes lit up with renewed hope, and she realized that no matter what deal she made with Quinella, her friends would never be satisfied with the decision to run away and hide, nor would it matter. As soon as she was gone, the Pontifex would surely renege on their deal and annihilate her companions. With this newfound determination, she held her staff high in agreement.

"You are right, Mateo. I am sorry for nearly forcing you to flee," she apologized, but the Twenty Fifth Knight merely shook his head, a grin on his face.

"No need," he said. "You're human as far as I'm concerned, and like every human, you're bound to make mistakes. So, what do you say we show her royal highness just how strong a human's willpower really is?"

Cardinal nodded, and she held her staff out. Without a word, her staff began to glow with golden light, and thick, sturdy lines formed over her allies' garments. "Now, the playing field is even…" she mused, before floating up and staring the Pontifex down at eye level. "Let us end our centuries long duel, Quinella!" she shouted, before unleashing a barrage of luminous lightning bolts at the Pontifex. Mateo and the others all leaped backward as the Sword Golem thrusted one bladed arm down at them, and they countered the attack with their own. Mateo's sword glowed with fiery light, and his axe shone like an obsidian pearl as both arced through the air and slashed into the Golem's arm.

Quinella flipped in the air to weave around Cardinal's bolts, but it was for naught as a volley of thermal arrows whipped through the air and pierced all the way through one of her arms. She cringed, having forgotten what true pain felt like after not experiencing it for three long centuries. She snarled in anger and flew through the air, summoning an ornate longsword into her hand. She attempted to skewer the Librarian, but Cardinal parried the strike with her staff, swinging it upward and leaving Quinella vulnerable to another barrage of lightning. For the first time in what felt like forever, Quinella shrieked in pain, and she flew back into the wall with a thud.

Meanwhile, stabbing her sword into the ground, Katherine vaulted over the arm of the Golem. She landed on the flat of its blade, and then she charged up its arm. She twisted around the second blade protruding from the Golem's shoulder, and her sword slashed into the titan's head with a loud clang. The Golem staggered back a step, and Katherine backflipped off of the mechanical monstrosity's upper body and into Mateo's arms, who set her down on the ground as Alice continued the assault from the other side with massive thorny tendrils, and Eugeo froze the Golem in place with his perfect control, only for it to be blasted backward by Kirito's sword, which fired off a massive jet black ray of umbral energy. His black, dragonscale coat rippled in the air with the attack as Mateo charged into the fray and released both the Arch Mantle Wyrm and Solus' dragon from his weapons.

The beasts charged through the air and the ground and wrestled against the golem, whose foot shot out towards Mateo. But instead of skewering him, as he'd instinctively expected it to, it ricocheted off of his armor, which glowed with golden light as the sword hit him. He gasped in shock, but that gasp quickly became a grin as he realized Cardinal's sacred art had worked. "Keep it up, you guys! Cardinal's spell works like a charm! This thing can't touch us!"

Cardinal spread her arms out wide. "Generate all elements! Discharge!" she commanded, and in response, one orb of light for each element formed in a half circle above her head. They flew towards Quinella, who blocked the attack with a massive metallic wall, but to her surprise, Cardinal had anticipated this. With a shout, the little magician carved through the metal sheet using a sword shaped thermal element, with the same technique that Mateo had used on her when they first met, long before he had ever even considered leaving the Church behind. The glowing red sword sliced through the air like a hot knife through butter as Cardinal flipped around and twisted, using the momentum from her swings to unleash a continuous barrage of sword strikes that kept Quinella constantly on the defensive.

At the same time, Mateo rolled backward and out of the way of one of the Golem's attacks as Katherine blasted it from behind with a powerful luminous wave from her sword. "Alice!" he cued his ally. He reached out with his left hand at the girl and a white light emanated from her. Using Incarnate arms, Mateo threw her into the air, where she crashed down on the golem with her razor sharp cloud of petals, sliding down one of its arms as it embedded itself into the ground after Eugeo sidestepped out of the way of a powerful thrust. He and Kirito were at her side in seconds, and together they blasted the golem with a storm of thermal arrows, each of which pierced the titan's bladed armor. Seconds later, Mateo and Katherine flew at the golem's back side by side, slashing three lines through the enlarged piety module poking through its back.

This onslaught continued on for what seemed to each fighter like hours, or maybe even days, with Cardinal keeping Quinella at bay while her allies worked in tandem with each other to bring the golem down. But eventually, the Pontifex had had enough, and she blasted Cardinal back with a pulse of umbral energy. The Librarian grunted as she slammed into the back wall, and Quinella extended a hand towards the ground. "System call! Imprison!" she shouted, and black lines swarmed from her palm and wrapped around Mateo, Katherine, Alice, Kirito, and Eugeo, carrying each of them to the far side of the room. Each of them struggled against the spell, but their efforts were for naught as the umbral coils wrapped tightly around each of them. No matter how hard they tried to fight them off, they couldn't move, and as they watched, The sword Golem reached into the air and slashed at Cardinal, who had flown just a few inches too low. Her spell kept the blade from severing her leg, but it still sent her careening off to the side and into the wall.

Quinella pressed her advantage, confident that her sacred art would keep Cardinal's friends trapped long enough for her to deal with her biggest threat, Cardinal herself. With a flick of her wrist, a volley of metallic spears appeared in mid-air, as her presence alone was more than enough to constantly keep the spacial resources in the room at an all-time high, simply because of how high her system control authority was. The metallic spears flew through the air, narrowly missing Cardinal as she pushed off of the wall and charged at Quinella, who swung her sword at the same time as when Cardinal brought her staff in an upward arc to blast the Pontifex into the ceiling.

The two weapons clashed against each other as their owners grunted with exertion. Their weapons locked around each other, but then Quinella revealed another trick she had hidden up her sleeve. Her sword glowed with purple light, and then where moments before there was a slender longsword, now the Pontifex gripped a mighty greatsword with two hands. She let out a roar as her blade pushed down on Cardinal, before sending her crashing to the ground. Cardinal hit the floor with a thud, and almost instantly, the Sword Golem was on top of her, slashing at her shield in a vicious attempt to shatter it like glass. Cardinal held up her arms in a vain attempt to protect herself from the Golem as it broke through the shield, but then suddenly, Quinella held up one hand, and the Golem backed off, its sword mere inches from her face.

Quinella pointed her sword, now the rapier she had summoned it as, at the bruised and beaten girl. "Letting my puppet kill you would be too easy… and too quick," she said, and with an evilly gleeful grin, she shot out a bolt of lightning from her rapier. It arced through the air, striking Cardinal in the chest and burying itself in the ground behind her with a cloud of dust. Her bowl shaped hat flew into the air and landed in front of Mateo, Alice, Kirito, Katherine, and Eugeo, vanishing in a cloud of particles.

Cardinal brought a quivering hand up to the arrow sized hole in her chest, and it came away covered in red blood. Shaking, she looked up at Quinella. "Was that your best? Tch, fire all you want! I-" she said, only to be cut off by another barrage of black lightning bolts.

She screamed as she fell backward, falling to one knee, and then to the floor as deadly lightning coursed through her body. Her allies watched on in horror, unable to do anything to help their friend. As the dust settled from Quinella's last storm of lightning, they saw Cardinal lying face down on the ground, blood leaking from multiple wounds all over her body. "I'm holding back right now, little one. After all, what fun would it be if I dispatched you quickly?" Quinella mockingly asked as Cardinal gasped and trembled in pain. "I have been waiting two hundred years for this moment!"

With another swing of her sword, Cardinal was launched into the air and then brutally assaulted by another surge of black lightning. She hit the ground with a thud, and then another blast of lightning sent her body flying off to the side, only to be struck out of the air and back in the opposite direction by a subsequent pair of bolts. As Cardinal screamed in agony, and her friends gritted their teeth and tried to free themselves from Quinella's spell, the Pontifex cackled with malicious delight, casting black bolts of lightning which caused Cardinal to bounce all over the ground like a ragdoll.

"I can't help…" Eugeo thought to himself as he watched his friend get tossed around like a wet rag, his struggles against Quinella's imprisoning spell growing weaker. He cast his gaze up to the ceiling. "Think! There has to be something I can do. Instead of berating myself about being weak, find a way to fight back!"

"Now, to finish our centuries long game… farewell, dear Lyserith! Farewell, my only daughter…" Quinella said, raising her sword high in the air. "Farewell… my other self!"

With that, she swung the sword and a massive, final bolt of lightning crashed down onto Cardinal and sent her spinning through the air. Her leg hit the ground far from where the rest of her body did, and Quinella's manipulative, sadistic tendencies overwhelmed her. She released Mateo, Alice, Katherine, Eugeo, and Kirito from their imprisoning spells, and watched in cruel amusement as they ran over to their fallen friend. Kirito cradled her head in his arms as Alice stroked her hair. They all knew her wounds were too great, and there was nothing they could do to save her. All they could do now was comfort and reassure her that her sacrifice would not be in vain.

"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry!" Kirito exclaimed, but Cardinal slowly shook her head.

"N- No need… to ap- apologize… You… still have a mission… to fulfill, don't you?" she asked, and Mateo nodded, tears in his eyes. "The five of you… save this fleeting, beautiful world…" she said, raising one hand into the air as she struggled to take one breath after the next.

Alice clasped both of her hands around Cardinal's. "We will, no matter what," she promised, her voice breaking. "You have given me a second chance, and I shall use it to defend this world to my dying breath."

Cardinal then looked over at Katherine, a pained smile on her face. "Your sister… I managed to dispel… the worst of the memories she had from her time as Quinella's… s- servant… When this is over, go be with her… take her to your h- home… Tell your family-" she said, only to be cut off by a bloody cough. "Tell your family what you've done here… They will believe you… when you come back with Araney…"

Katherine's eyes welled up with tears, and she nodded. "Cardinal… I can't thank you enough…" she said.

"Eugeo!" a voice called out to Eugeo alone. He looked up at the mural of a bluebird in flight on the ceiling. Where its eye should've been, there was a brightly shining crystal, one which shone even brighter than the rest, and he gasped as a ghostly image of Alice as he remembered her from their childhood floated away from it.

"That's it!" he exclaimed, before turning and getting down on one knee beside Cardinal. "I've finally figured it out! I know what my true calling is! I'm not going to run, or hide, or let my friends and allies die for me any longer. I'm going to stay, and fulfill my duty," he said, holding Cardinal's limp arm in his hands. "Please, Cardinal. With whatever strength you have left, I want you to turn me into a sword," he asked, before turning to look at the Sword Golem, which, like Quinella, was watching this turn of events with a piercing gaze. "Just like her puppet."

Mateo and Katherine both gasped, Kirito looked up in shock, and Alice's head whipped up to stare at Eugeo in disbelief as if she was questioning what she'd just heard him say. "Eugeo, no! You can't-" she started, but the blonde swordsman cut her off.

"Even if we escape, if we can't kill Administrator here and now, she'll find us eventually and kill us then! And that's not to mention that this is our only chance to stop her from turning half of the Human Empire into Golems!" he exclaimed. "We can't let her do that, but this sacred art must be the only way to destroy that mechanical nightmare. System call. Remove core protection," he said, this time fully aware of what would happen to him as a result. But he didn't care, whatever happened to him was inconsequential compared to what he'd save his friends and the Empire from experiencing.

A matrix of bright blue lines appeared all over his body leading down to his hand. "Go ahead now, change me. I'm ready. The bond between us is strong, much stronger than her and that monster," he said, and Kirito shook his head with tears in his eyes.

"Stop this!" he pleaded. "Don't do this!"

Mateo nodded. "Eugeo, you're jumping to conclusions! We don't need to take this risk!" he added.

But Eugeo shook his head. "It's ok. This is what I was meant to do."

After a moment, Cardinal nodded. "Very well, Eugeo. The last art I cast in life, shall be the one that fulfills your objective," she said. Purple lines flowed from her bloodied forehead down to her arm, and then along Eugeo's arm and up to his head.

"Hold on, before I go I need to tell you one last thing," Eugeo said to Alice, Kirito, Mateo, and Katherine. "Metal weapons and metallic sacred arts don't work on her. That's why I couldn't stab her with my dagger," Eugeo explained. When Kirito and the others nodded, he gave them all one last smile, before turning around and staring up at the bluebird's eye. A turquoise beam shot out from his forehead and hit the crystal dead on, and it was pulled down to him. To Eugeo's sight only, the Alice he remembered so vividly from his childhood emerged once again, and floated down to him in place of the crystal. He raised his arms, and they clasped each other's hands again.

Bright light flooded from Eugeo's body, and his friends watched in awe as the transformation took place. "Now what," Quinella muttered coldly. His arms out to his sides, Eugeo floated into the air as the Blue Rose Sword flew up above him, and slowly pierced him from above, disintegrating as every inch of the blade made contact with his chest. "What do you think you're doing, you half dead brat!" Quinella shouted, flying through the air at them.

"No, you don't!" Alice exclaimed, leaping over Cardinal and intercepting the strike with a cloud of razor sharp petals. Their blades locked briefly before Quinella pushed her away. Alice landed on her feet, however, and defiantly shouted, "Your lightning will not get past me!"

Quinella giggled. "You insolent little knights, how dare you defy me?" she asked, stabbing her sword into the ground as the Blue Rose Sword reached its hilt. "I shall burn all of you to cinders!" she shouted, and with numerous thermal elements, Quinella created a massive fireball in front of her. She threw it at the rebelling knights, but Mateo was there, ready to defend his friends.

"And we shall stop you again!" he shouted back, slashing the fireball in two with his sword. But the resulting explosion sent him flying back into Katherine's arms, and the two skidded back to stand beside Alice and Kirito. The Blue Rose Sword was fully absorbed into Eugeo's body, and glowing blue ribbons floated out of his body. They wrapped around each other in the shape of a sword, leaving nothing but the memory fragment that he'd pulled from the mural.

As everyone watched in awe, the ribbons melded together to form a massive, winged sword made of pure crystal. "Release… Recollection," Cardinal whispered from Kirito's arms. The memory fragment inserted itself into a perfectly shaped indent in the sword's wing styled crossguard, and just like the Sword Golem, a wave of icy blue light spread from it all along the blade with the same droning whir that Quinella's golem had created. The sword spun around in the air like a razor sharp disk, and then it pointed at the Sword Golem.

"You can mimic my spell all you want! One paltry sword is no match for my golem of thirty blades! It will snap it in half with a single blow!" Quinella shouted. But to her surprise, Eugeo, now a massive sword, did not falter. The sword flew through the air like a bullet and slashed at the Sword Golem, first from the front, and then when that failed, from all other sides.

Eugeo flew around the room, slashing at the golem whenever he had a chance until he paused beside Cardinal, Kirito, Mateo, Katherine, and Alice.

"Human… love… so bright, and full of shining… purpose… It's so… beautiful…" Cardinal mumbled as Eugeo pointed the memory fragment embedded in the crossguard at them. As if he was nodding at them, the sword dipped one wing.

"Yeah… it is…" Kirito agreed, and Mateo and Katherine held each other's hands. All the while, Alice slowly walked up to the sword, and she tapped the crystal with her hand. Bright blue light overcame Eugeo's bladed form.

"K- Kirito… Mateo… Katherine… and Alice… I must go now… Protect this world and its people. I leave the rest… to you…" Cardinal said, and a golden glow enveloped her. When it faded, her body was gone, and in its place was a massive cloud of golden particles. A small wind picked up in the room, and the particles flew over to Eugeo's sword. The gemstone in the hilt glowed brightly, and Alice pulled her hand away just in time before the sword's wings glowed with bright blue light. Just like the bluebird on the ceiling, the wings flapped, and suddenly the Blue Rose Sword flew towards the Sword Golem with an audible boom, breaking the sound barrier and shattering the piety module behind the Sword Golem.

The mechanical nightmare exploded with a massive ball of fire and smoke, and its shattered remains flew all around the room, shaking the Cathedral to its foundations. Quinella gasped in disbelief, but Eugeo wasn't done. He turned around in mid-air and pointed at the Pontifex, who simply snarled.

"Well, well. That's certainly a surprise. You want to fight some more, little boy?" she taunted. "Do not think that just because you could destroy my puppet that you are any match for me!"

With that, Eugeo careened towards the Pontifex, who held him at bay with a continuous peal of lightning from her sword. She let out a sickening laugh as Eugeo began to be pushed back, the tip of the sword beginning to crack and splinter.

"No Eugeo!" Kirito begged his friend. "Don't do it! You'll die!"

But it was for naught, and Eugeo was determined to see this through to the end. He forced through the lightning, and Quinella charged at him with a lightning infused thrust of her sword. "You wretched brat!" she shouted as their swords made contact with each other. The two weapons pushed against each other, locked at their tips until Eugeo pushed with all his might. Suddenly, Quinella was the one being pushed back, something she had not believed to be even remotely possible.

Against all odds, even as the cracks spread down to the hilt, Eugeo pushed onward, and he broke through Quinella's defenses and severed her arm from her body. But then, the cracks spread throughout the entirety of the Blue Rose Sword, and then it too exploded with a bright flash of fiery blue light.

Kirito, Alice, Mateo, and Katherine gasped in shock as the smoke cleared, revealing a broken Blue Rose Sword lying on the ground, its blade snapped in two. The Memory fragment glowed one last time, and then its light faded away. Blue, glowing ribbons stretched out from it, and as the massive sword disappeared, Eugeo reappeared, cut in half at his waist. Blood spilled from the wound as he grasped the memory fragment in his hand, and his four remaining allies ran over to him.

"Eugeo!" Kirito shouted in horror, and the Blue Rose Sword, having reverted back to its original form as a longsword, glowed blue. With an icy wind, it embedded itself in the ground next to Eugeo, it's master. Red crystals the color of blood grew up from around it, sealing Eugeo's wound, and then, it snapped in half just above the hilt.

A/N: Eugeo! *sobs for a while* Man, watching him die always hits me in the feels.

At any rate, this chapter was a lot of fun to write, well, minus the part where I had to have Eugeo die. I'm not deviating from the canon storyline that much, unfortunately, so he still has to go, and so does Cardinal. I know, I know, it hurts, but it has to be done. I hope you all enjoyed my attempt at fixing Cardinal's sacrifice though! I really like this version of that a lot better, because as some of you might recall, I actually went on a rant about how stupid it felt for Cardinal to just let Quinella kill her for no foreseeable benefit, the way she did in canon. We know first hand that Cardinal can go toe to toe with Quinella, because she'd done it before, so for her to just go and let Quinella kill her seemed like an overly blatant attempt to even the playing field when really, it was already even, if not tipping in Quinella's favor, because at that point, Quinella basically had the power of a god, and the only thing she was missing to actually be a god in that moment was true immortality. She literally was the system that controlled what happened in the Underworld, so if anything, having Cardinal get the axe only stacks the odds more against her allies.