"Any sign of them?"
Theresa said nothing as she stared at the several screens projected before her. It had been a few weeks since everything had happened. She didn't even acknowledge Himeko's presence as she scoured the information presented before her. Her mind teetered on the edge of insanity. The pronounced eye bags under her eyes were evidence of her lack of proper sleep due to her relentless, single-minded search for her nieces.
"Principal?" Himeko placed a hand on her shoulder.
Theresa's shoulders sagged visibly as soon as Himeko's hand made contact. "It's been three weeks and nothing's turned up. No lead. No clue. No contact from Kriemhilde even. We followed the Fafnir's last signal to that scorched forest but there's no trace of either of them left.
"Instead all we have are reports from boots on the ground. The Honkai Eruption that was created when Cecilia awakened as the Herrscher of the Void is spreading. Rapidly, I might add. So far, 15 countries within the vicinity of Schicksal airspace have declared a state of emergency or have outright fallen into anarchy. Germany, France, Spain, Belgium, Switzerland. The list goes on and on," she said.
Himeko sighed, knowing how much of a toll this was taking on her. She read the data on the screen, all pointing to several locations on the world map. "They can't have gotten that far."
"If they truly did use the Fafnir to escape and Kriemhilde willingly turned off its transponder, then we'll have to see if any military radar detected her flying within their airspace, but even that is…" she trailed off.
"What did the doctors say?"
"Nothing. They can't find them either. They usually track Kiana but the fact that Kiana's signal is seemingly gone has them both worried. Either way, the two are doubling their efforts on locating them both. We can't have Grandfather get Cecilia and turn her into a monster."
"And Schicksal?" Himeko asked.
"So far they've been quiet. It looks like they have their own mess to clean up over at HQ. I did notice Grandpa sending out search teams but nothing came up from it. How are… the kids?" Theresa asked.
Himeko bit her lip before sighing. She leaned against the railing and looked at the ceiling of the Hyperion's bridge.
"Just what you would expect. Mei is devastated. I think she's in the training room, taking her frustrations out on a few training modules. Bronya threw herself into linking up with all her contacts back when she was the Silver Wolf of the Urals. The two of them blame themselves for not being able to save Ceci. And now with both of them gone, I think… they may do something drastic just to find her," she said. "Wendy has been… doing well. Therapy has been going great for her. She's regained some feeling in her toes."
"And you?" Theresa said.
Himeko's lips pursed into a line as she contemplated her response.
"How bad is it?" Theresa asked.
"The treatments that the doctors have been giving me seems to be working. We can't replicate the Longinus Spear since we don't have the necessary component for it. But the best they can do is stall my illness until we can find a better way to deal with it," she said.
"Did they disable the transponder chip on the Godsbane?"
Himeko nodded.
"That's the best news I've heard in three weeks."
Theresa's grip on her arm tightened. She bit her lip, drawing a small amount of blood as she read over the findings once more, hoping to find a lead. "We need to find her. Tell the doctors we're resorting to using any method. I don't care who it is. Mercenaries. Bounty Hunters. Anyone. As long as you can find me a lead on those two. And look into the White Death. See if we can't hunt down any of Kiana's old contacts. She must have had a lot of those as an assassin, right?"
Himeko pushed herself off the railing and nodded. "I'll use mine as well. Though, I'll have to bring Bronya along with me. I need a name in the criminal underworld to use as backing if I want to pull any information without getting into a fight."
Theresa nodded.
Himeko walked past Theresa toward the door. "And Principal."
"What is it?"
"Don't burn yourself out. You're no use to anyone if you run yourself into the ground. Get some rest. Kiana and Cecilia need all of us on our A-game." Having finished her piece, Himeko walked past the door, leaving a weary and tired Theresa on the bridge with her thoughts.
THWACK! THWACK!
A training sword struck a training module again and again. Around her, dozens of ruined training bots lay in ruins. Their scrapped chassis were scattered across the entire room. She placed her hands on her knees as she wiped sweat off her brow.
"Generate on Real difficulty—"
[Access denied. Real difficulty is only accessible to Valkyrie Captains.]
"Screw access! Generate real difficulty!"
"Yelling at it will not fix anything, Mei."
Mei turned around, seeing Bronya float into the room. She was dressed in her training clothes. The smaller girl did a few stretches.
"..." Mei said nothing as she pulled up the screen. She typed in a number that made Bronya raise her eyebrow.
"Sister Mei, that's not—"
"I don't care! I need this! I lost her because I was… I was so weak," Mei's hand fell to her side. Her grip around the training sword tightened.
"Cecilia-idiotka would not want to see you like this," Bronya replied.
"Well, it's my fault we can't find her! If only… if only I could have beaten the Herrscher of the Void, then…"
"Then what? You'd be dead? Severely injured? Cecilia will only blame herself if that happens. That girl loves you too much and she'll never forgive herself for ever hurting you," Bronya reasoned.
"At least she'd still be here!" Mei shouted. She fell to her hands and knees. Tears mixed with her sweat, trickling down the sides of her cheeks and dripped onto the floor. "At least… she'd still be here…," she whispered.
Bronya placed a comforting hand on Mei's back, feeling the older girl's raw pain even if she herself couldn't bring herself to fully empathize with it. It was at times like this that Bronya cursed her adoptive mother.
"Everything will be okay," Bronya said, trying her hand at comforting another person.
"How…? Cecilia is gone… Kiana is gone too. God only knows what happened to them. For all we know, Schicksal could have gone in there and killed them both," Mei said.
"Cecilia is an idiot. Idiots like her don't die easily. And she has Kiana. I think… she'll be in good hands. All we need to do is find them," Bronya said, rubbing Mei's back.
Mei nodded weakly, her hands balling into tight fists. She wiped the tears from her red-rimmed eyes and stood back up. "Then… that means I won't stop either. No matter what the cost, I'll get her back. I swear." She gripped her training sword and prepared to initiate the training program.
"Wait. The Bronya can hack into the training module. We'll be using Real difficulty," she said.
A ghost of a smile appeared on Mei's face. It was the first time she'd let herself smile in three weeks.
"We won't stop until we get her back," Mei said.
"The Bronya also swears on it," Bronya said.
Before them, a horde of replica Honkai beasts were digitized into existence by the system.
The two girls held their respective weapons before charging.
"Amber, have you recovered the data we've gathered from the Herrscher?"
Otto sat in his chair, staring at the screen before him. All data from the fight had been damaged due to a massive output of Honkai energy from both Kiana and the Herrscher of the Void. He drummed his fingers against his desk as he waited for Amber to respond.
Amber nodded.
"And Kriemhilde?" Otto asked.
"Our search teams have located the Fafnir. Or rather what was left of it. The Fafnir crashed into the Alps. We scoured its wreckage but found that the black box had been irreparably damaged in the crash. Without it, we cannot determine what went wrong with the ship that led to its crash. In addition, we can't completely prove that Lady Kriemhilde crashed the ship on purpose either. None of its occupants were found except for a piece of Lady Kriemhilde's coat. Whatever happened, the crash erased virtually all evidence that anyone was ever aboard," she said.
Otto sighed and nodded. "What about the data? Did you have any luck in recovering anything?" he asked.
"However, I do have some unfortunate news."
"Between the Godsbane, Kriemhilde going missing, and Subject K-423 seemingly dropping off the face of the Earth, what happened?" Otto asked.
"Some of the data was unsalvageable. Many of the drones we sent to provide a live feed of the fight were scorched beyond recognition. A lot of the data on the ones we could salvage were corrupted by the immense level of ambient Honkai energy that was present in the area. Taking these considerations into account, we made do with what we had left," Amber said.
"It doesn't matter. The data we recorded from that fight is a treasure trove. It'll give us a deeper understanding of the Kaslana lineage. What kind of secrets are hiding in their blood that even that old bastard Siegmund doesn't know about," Otto said, remembering the form he witnessed Kiana enter before all feed was cut off.
Amber nodded and pulled up a file on the screen.
Kiana's monstrous form was displayed in full. It was far different from what he had seen Siegfried and Kriemhilde display during the Second Eruption. It appeared to be of a higher order. A form like that which was capable of evenly fighting or even surpassing Herrschers in sheer power and strength.
"Imagine if we could harness such a power. What a shame. Edelweiss seems to be a step below her relatives," Otto said.
"But that blows everything I knew about the Kaslana legendary power out of the water." He got up from his desk and walked to the large projection.
"Master Otto. These 40 seconds are all we were able to recover. The rest was unintelligible garbage of corrupted data," Amber said.
Otto said nothing as he watched the recording of Kiana fighting on loop. The power. The ferocity. If used correctly, it could potentially become a weapon that can deter or even control a Herrscher.
"It looks like I was wrong about Siegfried and Kriemhilde. I thought the beast-like forms they took during the Void Queen's first advent was the apex of humankind," he mused. He placed his hand on the screen. "But this! This is the next level. This appears to be the perfect form of that ability! Amber."
"Yes, Lord Otto."
Otto kept his stare on the video feed with an enigmatic gleam in his indecipherable green eyes. "Tell our researchers to resume our research into Stigmata Resonance. This… is not an opportunity we can pass up. If we can have Edelweiss attain such a power, we can bring a Herrscher to heel and propel my experiments forward," he said.
"As you wish, Lord Overseer," Amber bowed before leaving.
"A power to surpass Herrschers. If I can control this… then Kallen… our goal draws ever nearer. Wait for me," Otto said.
She stood amidst the sea of nothingness that stretched onto infinity. A myriad of worlds and possibilities floated past her as she drifted through the Sea of Nothingness. Her eyes closed, remembering the smile of finality on that woman's face before she faded to ash.
Her descendant who bore her name. She and her sister were bound to the same fate as her and her brother. It was truly a cruel joke played by fate for her to witness the same tragedy that befell her in a different era.
She closed her eyes and allowed herself to drift.
Whether it was hours or decades, she finally stopped and stood before a large tree with glowing leaves. A projection of her memory. The remnants of a promise she now carried from a time that was nothing more than a memory, lost to the cruel passage of time.
"Brother…" she said as she placed her hand on the tree. "I'll keep our promise…" she whispered as her cold, dead eyes gazed into infinity. And so, Kiana closed her eyes and waited, biding her time and patiently awaiting the moment she would be returned to the proper world.
The frigid weather of Siberia was a norm. It didn't matter whether it was summer or not. The cold was something ingrained wholly into the land. The cold decided how the people lived and died in this mostly desolate landscape. The people here were accustomed to it and sometimes, even thrived on it.
However, to her, the sensation might as well have been nonexistent. She didn't feel the cold. She didn't feel anything. A gaping emptiness was all that was left inside her. She just didn't care anymore.
The soft crunch of leftover snow under her boots was the only sound that echoed through the silence as she made her way back. The old wooden cabin, which had held so many fond and tragic memories, stood silently behind her as if mourning the loss of its occupants.
Placing the flowers she had gathered from the Gnarled Tree on the ground, Cecilia clasped her hands and closed her eyes. She was not particularly spiritual nor was she religious. However, she just felt the urge to do so.
"Cecilia!"
Cecilia looked up, seeing the door to the cabin opening.
Kriemhilde stepped out, dressed in a black coat with a scarf wrapped around her neck. She walked over and her eyes softened when she saw the site before her.
There were two more headstones next to her brother's.
"Did you get everything you needed?" Kriemhilde asked softly, kneeling next to her niece. Her hand rested on her brother's headstone as she muttered a silent prayer.
Her eyes drifted over, gazing at the words that were crudely burned into the stone.
Cecilia Schariac
Kiana Kaslana
"It's not your fault, you know," Kriemhilde said.
Cecilia didn't respond. She continued staring at the headstone with Kiana's name on it. Her silence spoke volumes of what she felt and Kriemhilde didn't dare to push her further over than she already was. Her eyes drifted down to Cecilia's waist. The Judgement of Shamash was in their respective holsters.
"I won't let her see me cry," Cecilia said. Her voice was hollow. The light in her once vibrant blue eyes had died alongside her sister on that battlefield three weeks ago.
"Cecilia, you can't just—"
"I promised her…I'd be strong for both of us. I won't let her see me break," Cecilia said, standing from her spot.
Kriemhilde frowned, watching as her niece stood.
"Ceci, she…"
"I know. She made her choice. She…" Cecilia bit her lip. She let out a shaky breath. "I'll never understand why she chose to save a monster like me…"
"Ceci, you know Kiana loves you. She saved you because she loves you," Kriemhilde said, standing up.
"..."
Kriemhilde sighed and turned her gaze back to the grave.
"Brother, Sister, Kiana, I'll take care of her," Kriemhilde vowed.
"Wait for me, Big Sis, Dad, Mom," Cecilia said. "It'll be a while but… I'll come home one day. Please… wait for me."
Cecilia laid her hand on the headstones one last time, lingering on Kiana's for a few minutes longer than she did her parents.
"Ich liebe dich… Kiana," she whispered.
The headstones said nothing in return.
The two stood at the graves for a few more minutes before departing from the cabin. As the cabin grew smaller and smaller in the distance, Cecilia continued to move forward. That was all she could do. She made a promise that she would. And so, with one foot forward, she continued to move onward, all the while leaving her heart buried beneath Siberia's frigid snow.
Man... where do I even begin? I never thought I'd see this point in my life.
You know, when I started this story 3 years ago, I had no idea where this would take me. I originally started this story before the reveal at Kolosten that Durandal was Kiana. After that, my brain shut down and I just had to take a break. Ah, right for anyone on Ao3, this story is 3 years old. It was posted on 2021 on . Anyway, I'd like to start this off by thanking everyone who stuck around to read this. This was... very depressing to plan out as I got closer to the end. I got super attached to fanfic Durandal and needed to clear my head after writing the previous chapter.
Kiana and Cecilia were easily my favorite characters to write and I was happy that you all loved their relationship. I loved writing every small moment between them. Every sisterly argument, every sisterly show of love. I was happy to write it. It just sucks that I had to kill off Kiana in the end for Cecilia to move forward. I did say I was going to make Final Lesson Kiana-style sad and I intended to deliver.
As for future plans, I do plan on writing a sequel sometime in the future, centering around Cecilia, going through the rest of Part 1. No, I'm not caught up with Part 2 nor will I ever write her going to Part 2. But anyway, yes, it will be centered around Cecilia. The epilogue basically sets up a sequel, hehe. So don't be sad. Just don't expect it to come for a while. That story is maybe... probably going to be longer than My Sister's Keeper. But keep a look out for the next... couple of months or so, maybe even shorter for the continuation to come out. I've mentally planned up to Moon Halo but I just need to write the in-betweens. Haha... writing, am I right? Imagining scenes in your head and spending 90% of the process getting there.
If you have any questions, feel free to ask whether it be in the reviews or the PMs.
But for now...
This is Crimcrom, signing off. Thank you for all your continued support up until now. I never would have finished this story without you guys.