Dark smoke wafted from Katarina's head, fresh and dark and abyssal.

Maria still thought it looked like some kind of stupid fashion look.

"Lady Katarina," Maria said as black-armored knights of the Royal Guard secured the hall the party was being held in and bells tolled, spreading the alert and having other knights lock down the castle, "can you recall where you've been, where you might have encountered Dark Magic?"

"Uh, not really," Katarina said, "I don't remember running into any Dark Magic. I'm sure I didn't run into any. I just went about my business. I moved along."

"Yes, so you've said repeatedly," Maria said, feeling an eyebrow twitch as her patience was tested. "Are you sure you can't bring me along the path you took."

"Eh, sorry Lady Maria. I told you, I got lost. And that wasn't the hallway I was looking for!" Katarina said brightly. "So I went about my business! I moved along! I remember clearly thinking that to myself."

"Can Dark Magic really do this?" Prince Alan said skeptically. "I mean, she doesn't seem any different from usual."

"I don't know," Maria said. "I'm not allowed to use it and find out. Not without permission from at least the Ministry."

"Ah, Lady Katarina…" Sophia sobbed. "Why did this have to happen to you? AGAIN!"

"It's things like this that make me think she need a bodyguard," Maria agreed.

"Hah ha!" the Third Prince proclaimed. "Have no fear, Lady Campbell. When Katarina is my princess, the full might of the kingdom will be protecting her! Speaking of which…"

"Brother, read the mood, this is no time for whatever asinine plot you have set up," Alan snapped.

"What he said!" Lady Hunt proclaimed.

One of the door opened, and Maria saw Lord Ascart entering after being checked over by one of the knights.

"I have it," the Prime-Minister-In-Training said, brandishing a parchment sheet. "From both father and a Ministry Director."

Maria blinked. "Why is there a ministry director here?" he said.

"Oh, Aunt Palin was visiting mother," Prince Alan said. "I guess that was still going on."

Lord Ascart nodded. "Also, the castle's Light Magic Wielders were found unconscious and stuffed into a closet," he said. "They can't be roused. However, Vice-Director Walt says it is Dark Magic. He's trying to wake them up but says they might need Maria."

Maria blinked. "Vice-Director Walt is here?" she said.

"Yeah, we got him disguised to not look anything like Sirius Dieke so he could dance with you a few times," Katarina said. "He didn't trust the master of disguise he knows at the Ministry for some reason, so we asked Lady Susanna, who's good at makeup, to make a disguise for him!"

"Surprise," Sophia said lamely.

"Surprise," Lord Ascart said, completely monotone and inflectionless

"Oh…" Maria said, surprised. "I… thank you. I'm sorry that subsequent events undercut the surprise."

"Yeah… so you better find whoever did this and make them hurt," Sophia said.

Maria nodded, opening the parchment. "I, King Artorias the 109th," she read, skipping over stuff, "King… duly enthroned… for this purpose only… grant permission!" She nodded, handing it back to Lord Ascart. "All right Katarina, I have permission from the King. I'm going to use Light Magic to remove any influences of dark magic from you, and then if needed use Dark Magic to read your recent memories to see how it happened. "

"Uh, is it really necessary to do that?" Katarina asked nervously.

"Hopefully not," Maria said, before placing calling eldritch light to her hands and placing it upon Katarina's head.

In her eyes, blinding brilliance erupted from her hand, driving the dark smoke back and uncovering Katarina's face, blasting the malign influence upon the other girl with her radiant gift

In everyone else's eyes, because Light Magic did not actually produce visible light, it just looked like Maria placed a hand on Katarina's head and looked intently constipated.

Katarina blinked a few times as the last vestige of smoke was removed from around her head. "Ah!" she suddenly exclaimed. "There WAS someone in that hallway! I thought it was a nice and polite hallway, but there was someone there!"

Maria's heart began to beat faster in anticipation. "Do you remember the way to go there?" Maria said.

"Yes, the nice hallway who was actually a woman gave me directions to get back here," Katarina said confidently. "You just have to go backwards. First you go out the hall and go left… no, wait you go right…" Katarina frowned, bowing down in deep thought.

Maria interrupted before too long had passed. "You've forgotten, haven't you?" she said flatly.

Katarina blinked again. "Ah, sorry, I was thinking of–"

Maria sighed and placed another hand on Katarina's head. "Think of the woman in the hallway," she ordered.

"The nice woman in the hallway?" Katarina said.

"Yes," Maria said as abyssal darkness enshrouded her hands as she raised her free hand to her forehead. This was why she'd asked for permission to use Dark Magic. "Think of the woman in the hallway…"

In Maria's eyes just before she closed them, a smoky blackness began to emanate from her hands, digging into Katarina's head as black smoke clouded over her eyes…

…a woman standing silently in a dark corridor...Is this a horror movie? she thought. This is too scary…

They had been staring out the window, which showed nothing but sky. She wondered if they had been watching the fireworks too.

"Oh, hi!" she said. "Sorry for screaming. Were you watching the fi– er, the nightflowers too?" she had to admit, the name was kinda cool!

"Yes," the woman said in a young, thankfully unghostlike voice. "They were very pretty and loud. But then they stopped."

"I think they ran out," she said.

"Oh. That's too bad," the woman said. She finally turned and looked at me. "Guests are not allowed to go any further. This hallway leads to the royal crypt, which people are forbidden from entering…"

…she listened as she was given directions back to the party, thinking the hallway, which was definitely empty, was dark and creepy but so nice…

Maria's eyes snapped open. "They're in the hallway leading to the royal crypt," she said.

"That's not far from here!" the Third Prince said, even as he looked alarmed. "But no one is supposed to go down there! It's forbidden to all but the king!"

But Maria was already gone, leaping over the knights in front of the still open door and turning to head down the hall, retracing the directions Katarina had been given…

Maria avoided the knights that tried to detain her even as the Third Prince ordered them to follow her to the intruder. However, the knights quickly fell behind, their heaving, clanking footsteps getting father and farther behind her as she ran down hallways, made turns, climbed stairs and opened doors. An internally smirking part of her declared that this was why hunters had chosen to rely on speed and agility instead of heavy metal armor.

She slowed as she felt the darkness head of her.

The hallway… was too dark. It was not an absence of light, but a DARKNESS that spoke not only to her Dark Magic, but to her very Dark Soul. Even the little moonlight that entered through the windows, more than enough for a Hunter used to working in dark sewers and cloudy nights, seemed to dim, despite her being able to see through the perfectly clear windows.

At the end of the hall stood a massive door, sized as if for one of the gigantic gods of myth. In front of it, she could make out the fallen forms of knights and the slim, slight form of a woman examining the door.

A pillar of enormous black smoke rose from her, higher than the door, higher even than the ceiling, spreading like a flame.

Even from this distance, Maria recognized her, just as she'd recognized her in Katarina's memories.

It was the Dark Magic Wielder she'd encountered in the border town of Noir, the one who'd evaded her after days of hunting. The one who'd been about to experiment on children.

Her children.

She had found her prey once more.

Maria drew her pistol with her left hand as she used her right to take one of the paper twists of primer from the pouch on her left bicep. With a practiced flick of her thumb, she tore the packet of primer and poured it into the flash pan in one simple motion before snapping the frizzen down on it and drawing back the flintlock, ready to fire the cartridge already loaded. Then she drew her sword.

The saber slid from its sheath silently, and Maria hefted the saber in her hands. In the dim light, its blade seemed to glow slightly with a strange blue sheen.

Then she lunged straight for the woman who'd used Dark Magic on her maybe-half-sister. The length of the corridor was no obstacle for her charge.

She made a sound as she rushed down the falls at inhuman, at hunter speeds, the very air being pushed aside from her path.

The woman barely had time to turn around before the tip of Maria's saber stabbed into her shoulder.

The woman screamed in surprise as blood, so dark it looked black in the gloom, erupted from the exit would and began trickling down her dress.

"Hello," Maria said, skidding to a halt as the woman was thrown back from the force of the impact, sliding off the blade and slamming back-first into the enormous door she'd been examining. "We meet again."

She raised her pistol and fired straight at the woman's knee.

Sarah, The Dreg of Dark Magic
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Lady Maria Campbell, The Wandering Knight of Sorcier
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Black Radiant Lifegem
Stone made up of crystallized Dark Souls. Gradually restores HP.

The dull glimmer of these mysterious stones brightens with the passage of time.