The woman's foot knocked Maria's gun aside just as the powder went off, narrowly avoiding getting dismembered. Instead, the bullet merely blew a chunk from her thigh and shattered on the door behind her, peppering her with shrapnel.

A pity. This woman was good at running away. Maria didn't want to give her a chance.

A distant part of her considered that a revolver might be a good idea after all as her saber darted, intent on making sure this woman wouldn't be able to run away again. The woman kicked at her knee, and Maria was forced to move her leg to go with the blow, sliding her foot back and stabbing the woman in the gut instead of the heart.

Then the woman raised a hand and darkness erupted from it, obscuring her view.

It wasn't the ephemeral, abyssal darkness of Dark Magic. All light disappeared, leaving Maria in absolute, pitch-black darkness. All she saw were the little motes of white one usually only saw on the inside of someone's eyelids. She darted back on instinct, putting distance between herself and the woman, even as a sound like soft stone being crushed rang like a tone. She still felt the stone under her feet, could still feel the weapons in her hands. Her left thumb cocked the hammer and frizzen on her gun, and she squeezed the trigger. There was the snap of the hammer moving forward, of the flint striking steel, but there were no sparks…

She could, however, still smell the blood in the air.

She swung toward the scent of blood, and was rewarded by a Katarina-esque yelp of surprise. The sound was all she needed and she stepped towards it while alternating between flourishing her saber and slashing as she tucked her pistol back into its holster. She heard more footsteps on the stone floor, felt surges of Dark Magic, heard them moving away from her and she followed them, homing in on the sound of feet on the stone floor. The footsteps broke into a run, but instead of running after it, Maria spun and leapt to the ceiling, only to come crashing down towards the sound.

She slammed bodily into someone, and the woman let out a cry of pain. Maria made her best guess as to where the woman's head was and slammed her saber down.

Sadly, there was no cracking of a skull get crushed like an egg or even the resistance of flesh, merely of titanite-alloyed geisteel sinking into stone, but the woman under her stopped struggling. This close, Maria felt the vaguely nauseous, stomach-roiling wrongness of the woman's Dark Magic, feel the force behind it like a silent, aetheric vibration making her bones shake, but she couldn't see the smoke…

"Were you expecting me to trip on the fallen guards?" Maria said.

"A little," the woman said, sounding slightly breathless. There was another sound tone-like sound of stone being crushed. "How are you seeing anything?"

Her sword was still stabbed into the stone floor, so Maria elected to punch where she was reasonably sure the woman's head was. She felt an ear under her fist as she punched, and there was a thud as the woman's head struck the stone floor. There was another disturbingly Katarina-esque childish cry of pain.

That helped her refine her aim as she blindly grabbed the woman's hair and started slamming her head into the stone floor.

Behind her, there was the sound of metal armor on stone, of several sets of armored bodies getting to their feet.

Maria pressed her knee against the woman's neck, drawing her gun and reloading it with swift, practice motions. She pressed the muzzle to the woman's back…

Only to have a massive hand grab the back of her coat and pull her off the woman, who started letting out choked, pitiful cries. Maria aimed her pistol behind her and fired. There was a wet sound wrapped around something punching through metal and she dropped, immediately rolling to get some distance from her sudden attacker.

Around her, she heard more metallic sounds of movement.

Belatedly, she summoned her Light Magic, and finally something pierced the gloom. Light erupted from where she felt her hand to be and around it the darkness became less absolute. The darkness wavered slightly and Maria raised her hand to her head.

The darkness was banished, in time for Maria to see the woman struggling to her feet and a black knight swinging a black greatsword at her. She rolled towards her sword, casually backhanding the woman and making her fall to the ground as Maria ripped her saber from the stone floor. The knights all had dark smoke wafting strongly from their heads. They carried swords, shields, paired greatshields, greatswords, maces, and… wait, why was that one carrying a scythe? Who thought that was an appropriate weapon to carry indoors?

One had a mangled bicep, and seemed to be bleeding a lot. The scent of their blood filled the hallway, and mixing with the scent of the woman's.

Ah. She'd probably have to make sure whoever that was didn't die from this.

Offhandedly stabbing one of the woman's knees and causing another disturbingly childish scream, Maria flipped her sword into the air, reloaded her pistol and caught her sword on the way down.

Then she lunged.

She charged at the one with the greatshield on each arm, flipping over them and kicking them in the face. Dark Magic coursed down her leg, and she felt his mind and ordered him to fall unconscious. The knight collapsed like a giant insect with its bellringer silenced as Maria used the leverage to flip again. The one she'd shot tried to take a swing at her, but their mace was too short. Maria landed lightly, only to roll under the scythe-wielder's blade. Her hand slapped onto the scythe-weilder's breastplate, and she let her Dark Magic flow, but there was no contact. Maria scowled. The armor was too thick.

She ducked under a gauntleted backhand as she swept her saber overhead and behind her, and she heard it parrying three other swords and a mace, before rolling to avoid a greatsword that the scythe-wielder sidestepped. Her pistol went up and she shot the greatsword-wielder's bicep, making them lose their grip on their greatsword enough for her to slam her pommel into their opposite wrist and get them to drop it completely. Her knuckles briefly pressed against their wrist, and she called Dark Magic. A second knight collapsed like a rope bridge that a dragon crashed into.

She counted the other knights. Four still up, one with two swords, one with a sword and shield they kept raised that Maria smirked at, the scythe-wielder and the other one she'd shot, holding a mace while their injured arm flopped weakly.

The dual wielder leapt at her, both swords swinging as the one with the shield circled, trying to get at her back and the scythe and mace wielders spread out. Maria met their leap, pistol parrying the tip of one sword down as she used her saber to parry the other up, and she kicked them in the face. Dark Magic flowed down her foot again, and the knight collapsed like a punctured ego as Maria holstered her pistol and picked up one of the swords. Flourishing it to get a feel for the weight, she met the blade of the scythe as it swung at her head as the shieldbearer wavered back and forth hesitantly.

The mace-wielder had no such hesitation as they swung an overhead blow at Maria. Maria spun as she pulled the scythe blade, blocking the mace on it's haft and bouncing the mace-wielder back. The scythe was thrust at her like a spear but she pushed it upwards, getting inside its reach as she slammed a pommel into the scythe-wielder's knee. As they wavered, almost losing their balance, Maria's Dark Magic flashed around her hand as she slammed the pommel up between the knight's legs.

Huh. A woman. It was enough contact to render them unconscious and Maria pushed her collapsing form aside as they fell like a buffet table to Katarina's appetite.

The shieldbearer raised their sword, lowering their shield to do so, and Maria kicked their ankle out from under them. She stepped aside as they lost their balance and fell, grabbing their elbow and using Dark Magic to render them unconscious on the way down.

The lone mace-wielder circled warily, but Maria was having none of it. They were losing a lot of blood, and she didn't have time to draw them in. She stepped forward, daring them to attack, and contemptuously quickened out of their way before placing a hand on the bleeding hole in their armor and calling eldritch light to their hand.

"ARGH!" Their scream signaled the Dark Magic being dispelled just before the bone was reknit and the flesh healed. "Wh-what happened? Ah, my arm!"

"Don't touch it, there are bone shards and metal buried in it," Maria said with authority. She tossed down her pilfered sword and sheathed her saber, kneeling over the other man she'd shot. A hole had also been punched through his armor, metal shards imbedded in his crimson, mangled flesh but strangely it didn't seem the bone was broken. The bullet was visible too. Fishing it out with her fingers, she tossed it aside before calling more eldritch light to her hand.

"ARGH!"

Apparently, Light Magic dispelled Dark Magic influence faster than it healed. She'd have to remember that.

"Please patch each other up," Maria said as she stood. "I'll be back."

The woman was already halfway down the long hallway, running like someone who hadn't just been stabbed in the knee and gotten several leg-related injuries even before that. Maria took two steps and lunged.

The woman looked over her shoulder in time to throw herself out of the way, and Maria overshot as tapestries flashed by, skidding to a halt even as she unsheathed her saber again. She was staring at Maria in horror, a vaguely familiar black stone clutched in her hands.

"You're not getting away again," Maria snarled at her. Maria quickened at her, but the woman desperately snapped up her hand again, and once more absolute darkness engulfed Maria's vision. Maria immediately jumped back and called eldritch light to her hand, even as she heard the sound of glass breaking and panicked footsteps.

When her vision returned, Maria rushed towards the nearest broken window, and looked outside. Short, manicured trees that would have shaded the windows in the day made for a deep darkness in the night, and it took her a while to realize there was only a short drop to the ground. Beyond the trees were some greenery and boxed flowers and then a railing. Maria leapt outside, wincing even at the relatively safe fall to the ground. She glanced left and right, using precious time trying to see someone moving in the shadows between the trees and wall before rushing towards the balcony and looking over. Far below was one of the moat-like aqueducts that supplied water to the castle, glistening dark and deep in the light of the moon and stars. Maria spun, trying to see where the woman had run off to, but there was no woman and no smoke of Dark Magic.

Maria's scream of rage echoed through the night.

For a long moment, she seethed.

Then she took a deep breath, sighed and turned around to get back to the window, not knowing how to get back inside the castle from here.

From the broken window, she heard an indistinct cry. She jogged towards it, wondering if she underestimated if she'd healed the knights sufficiently.

"Intruder! Stop! Stop her! Lady, she hid behind a tapestry! She hid behind a tapestry!"

Maria had time for an eyebrow to twitch before she broke into a run, leaping up the wall and crashing through a window to get back in. Glass tinkled on the stone around her as she spun, but evidently the blindness wasn't completely a phenomenon of her mind. An impenetrable darkness filled one end of the hallway, one that moved at about, say, a woman's running pace, looking like a cowardly abyss as it uncovered lengths of the hallway. Maria ran after it and as she did, she heard glass break again. And again. And again.

Maria swore, damning the woman to have calamity befall her camels, elephants, lizards and birds in Gerudosa and ran faster.

By the time she was almost at the end of the hall, the darkness had dissipated and there was no woman in sight. Only a hallway with many broken windows, any of which the woman might have escaped through.

As Maria slowed to stop in impotent rage, she heard the clanging of armor and saw the knights coming from the hall they'd held the party, with the Third Prince, Prince Alan and Lord Ascart in the lead.

"She ran," Maria said. "I couldn't see where she went, she used some… some magic I've never seen before to blind me. I didn't even know you could do that. There are hurt knights down that hall, they'll need surgeons to get fragments out of their arm."

The Third Prince pointed, and a group of knights charged down the hall towards their fellows. Another knight, likely an officer, began barking orders to cover the grounds and block the aqueduct.

"What took you so long?" Maria asked, trying not to sound petty.

"Wall of fog," Prince Alan said. "No one was willing to run inside. Not without more senior knights. But then it suddenly just disappeared. We were kind of hoping you killed them."

Maria shook her head. "No," she said bitterly. "I kept injuring her, but she kept getting up somehow."

"She must have used Black Lifegems," the Third Prince said. "The stores in the chest of the castle infirmary where the Light Magic Wielders were found unconscious was missing its supply, among other things. It's slower than Light Magic, but it does the job."

As something that was produced after people died, Black Lifegems and its variants were a controlled substance and illegal to possess if you couldn't prove its provenance. Even then, most Black Lifegems were used to memorialize the dead that produced them, with the few in circulation having been willed by the rare generous person who had added that as a clause in their will should their remains generate one, or so Maria had learned in Medicinal Magic class.

Maria wondered how many people's remains had been defiled tonight, just to keep the woman healthy enough to run.

"I should look for her," she said as the knights spread out to search. "She might leave a trail."

"How rested are you?" the Third Prince asked.

Maria looked away.

"You've done enough tonight," the Third Prince said. "Go back to Katarina, rest. The party's over, and Vice-Director Walt managed to wake up the other Light Magic Wielders. They're checking people for influence now, and we've called the Ministry to provide that Sora person to double check in case it's Dark Magic that might be missed."

"No one in the party besides Katarina had Dark Magic on them," Maria said.

"Best to check again," Prince Alan said grimly. "Whoever this was, they got into the castle somehow."

"And I can help," Maria insisted.

"You want to help, protect Katarina," the Third Prince said, and Maria felt overwhelming irritation as he obsessed over a single woman even in this situation. "She's in one of the guest rooms with the other girls. If this woman is still in the building, then you can keep her and everyone else safe. Most everyone else in this castle is paid to deal with things like this woman. Let your tax souls work."

Maria's irritation deflated. "Understood, your highness," she said. "Be warned that wrists, knees, elbows and the helmet of armor are too thin to block Dark Magic."

"Noted," the Third Prince said. Nicol literally took out a notebook and made a note of it. "Now get to the girls. I'll have hot water sent up so you can wash off that blood."

Belatedly, Maria realized her gloves and parts of her coat was covered in blood. "None of it is mine," she said.

"Yeah, we figured that," Prince Alan said dryly. "Go. Your luggage is already there."

Maria swayed slightly as the adrenaline started to wear off, and the edges of tiredness made itself known. "Yes, your highness. But, if you run into her…"

"We'll call you," Prince Alan said.

Maria shook her head, and pitched her voice low. "Shoot her with crossbow bolts and don't stop until she stops bleeding. She took down six knights by herself, even if it was by surprise and ambush, and used those six knights to attack me. I think she used Dark Magic to alter their minds. Which implies great subtlety and experience, since Dark Magic supposedly only alters memories and emotions. If this woman is found, don't risk anyone touching her. Just shoot her until she dies."

The Third Prince stared hard at her, as did Prince Alan. Then they shared a look and simultaneously nodded.

"Give the order," the Third Prince told Nicol, who nodded and walked to one of the squires he had stayed as a runner.

Another was ordered to guide Maria to the right guest room. As she walked (after collecting her expended cartridges), she heard a bell toll, and knew the knights had just received the order to kill the intruder on sight.

Maria smiled a grim smile, and hoped the woman was found.