With an almighty crash, the doors of the cathedral slammed open, the scarlet light from outside stabbing across the flagstones. Cold winds guttered out candles and rattled their holders. Remilia's eyes allowed her to see far into the cathedral, to see through the darkness that surrounded the penitent at the altar rail. Her rounded shoulders shook and her clasped hands shuddered. Through the conduit between them, Remilia could sense the guilt, the anger, the fear and despair.
"Hark! In lieu of angels I will send a devil," Remilia began, the fiery relief and nervous laugh that travelled back to her cracking her voice, "to walk within My house to answer thy prayer and undo the wicked."
"Don't recognise that verse," The servant girl mumbled, but that was okay. Remilia could hear her just fine.
She began her walk down the aisle as she admitted, "I may have made that one up."
The servant girl managed a pitiable noise of acknowledgement.
"Come now, Sakuya! Did you really think I'd go back on my word?!" Remilia declared, her smile broadening as she felt her words begin to beat away the storm that clouded Sakuya's heart, "Besides, do you not have something to say to your apparent rescuer? Hmm?"
"You're bloody late," Sakuya sobbed, joining in with Remilia's heartfelt guffaw. Remilia was on the brink of retorting when Sakuya kept going, "I'm sorry I said those things. I'm sorry I couldn't help you. I'm sorry for getting you involved. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, Remilia, I can't go with you, I'm sorry."
That last sentiment abruptly killed Remilia's shushing laughter, a confused scowl forming on her face. "Can't? Don't give me can't. Can! Will!"
"Are you not going to respect her wishes, miss Remilia?"
As soon as the words were uttered, they were felt; the white noise of anxiety roaring through the connection loudly enough to make Remilia flinch. The vampire stopped, turning and scanning the darkness above her. She knew who it was, lurking in the upper galleries. He still sounded as smooth as velvet, but she could hear a high tension in his voice that a clearing of the throat failed to disguise.
"Of all the people to brief me on courtesy," Remilia replied in a hard voice, her eyes searching the shadows, "Come on out, mister Barnes. I yearn for a tête-à-tête." Her quarry wasn't stupid enough to loom down at her from the railings. He kept to the periphery, keeping the gallery's stone floor between them.
"We're at a fine enough distance to discuss terms for a ceasefire, I feel." Edwin determined from the opposite gallery - behind and above Remilia.
She wheeled round, her eyes wide as her senses searched the blackness above her for a disturbance in the air. He'd been in front of her a moment ago.
"You wish to discuss terms, so soon after breaking faith?" Remilia asked. She began to smile as he heard him laugh nervously in response.
"I do."
"Ha!" Remilia fired out, her nose wrinkling as she took small steps towards the altar, her gaze sweeping from left to right, "Let's hear them then."
"Stand down your forces. Allow myself and my girl free passage to Boston. In recognition of your mercy, I'll give you my empire. You can have London," His voice cut away abruptly before resurfacing at Remilia's side, "All of its districts," He was back on the second floor by the time she flinched, "All of its souls, yours to feed on."
"Interesting," Remilia hummed.
"A generous offer, is it not?"
"Tell me," Remilia ignored his words, "Why do you want Sakuya? Not Jill, not Morgen, nor any of the others?"
There was a pause. "Are they still alive?"
"No, they aren't. I offered them the opportunity to surrender, but they declined." Remilia said.
"Even Jill?"
She recalled hearing the werewolf's death cries from the other room, and the accounts Meiling and Flandre had given her. Her imagination could immediately twist any of those details into a dagger to wound Edwin. She wondered if it was the setting or the souls that had touched her throughout this week that made her deploy her words differently. "She died thinking of you, mister Barnes."
She felt Barnes stop, a shudder passing through his form. There was sorrow there.
And joy.
"Well, that is a pity. She was responsible for our day-to-day, balanced the books, all that. As for 'Sakuya', she has displayed exceptional growth and promise. Did you see the mess made of my two compatriots? To have her develop such raw talent under my tutelage would be-"
"Your perception of my power," Remilia cut through his words, turning to face his general vicinity, "Tells me much. Your offer to hand all of London is… well, it sure is something. I have a proposal of my own, though I fear it may render our aims mutually exclusive."
She could feel Edwin's anger at being cut off radiate from the gallery. "Let's hear them," He said, obscured by the railings and sturdy stone flooring that separated them.
"Sakuya goes free," Remilia threw a tired smile to the worried servant girl, "She may walk with me or carve a path of her own, but she will follow you no longer."
"And this other condition?" He asked.
Remilia's gaze snapped back up to Edwin's position on the gallery so quickly he shrinked from the railing. "The other condition is that you die, tonight, beneath my claws."
Edwin Barnes' laugh started loud, trailing away as Remilia joined in. "Ah… what an attractive offer. And what do I get out of this arrangement, if I may be so bold?"
Remilia stared up into that petty, destructive darkness, knowing her next words would give him no choice but to descend on her. He was fresh for this fight, his capabilities were unknown, and she could not read his fate.
But she could read her own. With a stab of will and an opening of her hand, threads of darkest red that only she could see opened out for her like a great tree, every possibility hanging off of the branches of every major action she could make. She had little time to read them all, seeing only one common theme.
A monster was going to die tonight.
"You get to make the first move," Remilia smiled.
Edwin instantly emerged in front of her, his knife plunging down.
In the defaced, bullet-chewed cavern that was the Scarlet Devil Mansion's front, Flandre came close to losing her temper.
"Why can't I go out after Remi?!" She fought to be heard over the shouts and confirming callbacks of the fairy workforce.
"It's too dangerous, little miss," Meiling explained to her before addressing the chaos all around her, "Penny, more shot from the armoury, send a runner! Teams 7 through 10, get those walls repaired! Megane, I want a barricade barring the stairs here."
"Well, why doesn't Patchy take me then?!" Flandre asked, feeling her anger flare as Meiling's attention was stolen by a fairy detailing their wounded and how quickly more could be rotated to let the exhausted rest.
"Patchy's using her upheaval magic in preparation for our escape and maintaining the storm. We can't ask her to do more." Meiling told Flandre.
"Then you take me!" Flandre said firmly.
"I have to manage this!" Meiling managed, her eyes again leaving Flandre.
"I want to do something!" Flandre shouted hotly, loud enough for the closest workforces to shirk from them.
Meiling looked down at Flandre, seeing her wobbling lip, not needing her power to know how helpless she felt. She took in a breath, her hands going to Flandre's shoulders.
"I would be a nervous wreck if I didn't have my charge, miss Flandre, with me," Meiling began, halting Flandre's opening mouth with a finger, "And I'd be a little scared if I didn't have you here to watch my back."
Flandre's eyes brightened, remembering Remilia's words. 'I need you awake.'
She blinked away the tears, her voice becoming small. "What if Remi's in trouble?"
Meiling removed the finger at Flandre's lips, her hands cupping her face. "I think we both know that her enemy is the one that's in trouble; especially armed with what you entrusted her with."
Remilia sent one of the pews clear of the floor with a feral kick. Edwin ducked, the heavy bench sailing over his head as his black blade came up in a tight uppercut. Once, twice, three times, their knives glanced off of one another before Remilia plunged her own up for Edwin's stomach, between the dark jacket folds.
Shadows rushed from either side and interlocked like teeth, intercepting the blade and perforating her hand.
"What in God's-" Remilia ripped her hand free before Edwin could take her head off.
"'Light as a child', am I?" Edwin cackled, giving chase, filling the space.
He was huge.
Remilia had never been tall, but he truly dwarfed her now, Sakuya's terror magnifying his essence. He might have been a rake and a lightweight, but Sakuya's perception of him made him broad and tall and fast and savage with that knife-
Remilia skipped backwards as that very knife tried to take her eyes, missing narrowly and slicing azure hairs from her head.
You have bested foes more fell than this, she told herself as her hand regenerated and scarred over.
You have traded hammer blows with Odinsdottir and survived. You have crossed blades with the Charlatan of the Sixth Heaven and triumphed. You have slain scores of demons and can sweep aside whole armies of mortals with a thought. Where you go, angels fear to tread.
All feats she had accomplished when she had been at her best. When she hadn't been fighting well into daylight hours, wounded, parched. Meanwhile, Edwin had stores of power, all of it bolstered by the anxious, frail maid that waited down the aisle.
Gungnir sparked to life and flicked back in retort. Edwin Barnes disappeared from the space her spear stabbed through, reappearing beyond her range a moment later.
"My, is this how the legend of this 'Scarlet Devil' ends? In a house of God, in a feud against a fellow noble? A footnote beneath my own imperial legacy?" Edwin asked, a cruel grin twisting his mouth.
Remilia couldn't read his fate, but she could read her own. The stress of doing so during battle was like flying fast at street level on a city's roads, swerving in and out of traffic. But it kept her alive. Kept her in the fight. Kept her able to vaguely perceive and avoid cul-de-sacs and gambits that led to her own beheading, her exsanguination, her immolation… but those bursts of speed that the watch gave her opponent jarred and shunted Remilia's perceptions throughout. Attack vectors once thought safe became minefields, actions of assured survival became bitter do-or-die endeavours, all thanks to that damn pocket watch…
Edwin raised that same pocket watch as though it were a loaded pistol. Remilia's eyes widened, a heel pushing off the floor-
The next instant, she was slammed down the aisle by a kick to her diaphragm. It had been untrained and unpracticed but it had been aimed with a knowledge in human anatomy and loaded with malice. It left Remilia coughing and swallowing air, the crackling Gungnir singeing the space where Edwin had been standing. As Remilia frowned, feeling a twinge on her cheek. Her slender fingers traced across it as she watched her enemy step away. She felt the faintest outline, her fingers tracing the letters 'E.B' before coming away bloody.
He had marked her cheek with his initials in the time the pocket watch had given him.
She grunted as her smile brought her pain. That same smile made Edwin pause before he closed the gap.
"I was willing to let you live, you know," He assured her as the midnight blade shrieked through Gungnir's burning shaft in a shower of sparks. Remilia swung anyway with the broken ends of the dying spear. "A favour, made from one monster to another, between equals," He mused, his blade deflecting one of the shorn spear staves.
Whenever he used the watch, it hurt her. She could read her own fate and minimise the damage, but that was it. She was losing slower, nothing more. As soon as she bored him, he would stop playing his game.
So she strove not to be boring, even as Gungnir fizzled out. She forced a chuckle through her teeth as she drew her knife.
"What the fuck have you to laugh about?" Edwin snarled, the watch forgotten as he followed her down the aisle, his blade cutting through the air.
"What," Remilia lost the guard of her knife to the black blade's bite, "Pray tell," She deflected past his strike, slicing the air he had once occupied, "Is so noble about you?"
Edwin's frown grew puzzled, lingering beyond range before returning, forcing her to skip backwards on black wings as she went on, "From my time here in London, I have seen the effects of your influence! I have seen the people waste their lives rehearsing moments when you mattered!"
Her knifepoint glanced off of the vorpal blade's handguard.
"I saw how Jill shrank from you in the square, more fearing than adoring!" She shouted as they shared five bouts, "I've seen you bruise Sakuya-"
"Stop calling her that!" He shouted, pushing the plunger on the watch. Remilia had been watching for that, her wings beating hard.
The moment passed, and she felt no pain. None at all. He hadn't risked leaping to meet her. He would have been vulnerable in the air. She dove on him again and again, her knife and her words lashing him with every pass.
"Noble!," She spat the word, "You've done nothing! Built nothing! You've not moved forward, only looked back, and clung to this city and glutted yourself whilst terrorising your subjects! What a noble example to follow, with your sacrificing your friends and foot soldiers-"
The plunger pushed again. One instant, Remilia was flying down the aisle, gifting Edwin a knife stroke that bit deep into his shoulder.
The next, tatters of leathery skin fell from the spasming skeleton of her wings.
She crashed off of a pew, skipping, rolling, crashing into the altar rail.
"Remilia!" Sakuya shouted.
The voice rang in the vampire's head. The surf of dying hope washed over her from Sakuya's corner. Her wings were ripped and torn and burned with pain. She had to get up. The pain was immense, but she had to get up. She'd lost her knife. Still, up…
"So we have something in common, then," Edwin said the words with relish.
Remilia could feel Sakuya's confusion, a cold racing down her own spine as she reached for the altar rail in time for Edwin to swing down and ram her own silver knife into her shoulder. She seized, a shaky roar of pain passing her lips.
"After all," Edwin simpered down at her, "You were the one to kill Jared Osbourne, were you not?" He asked.
Remilia felt her stomach plummet. She tried to protest, but the words did not come. Her eyes slid from her enemy, searching Sakuya's as what little hope and goodwill flowing from her abruptly ceased.
"What?" The servant girl asked.
Remilia tried to invoke the Gungnir as mister Osbourne's blood flowed freely from her shoulder. Nothing came. She was in too much pain from the silvered wound, or she was losing too much blood. If she could just have a moment-
The plunger was pushed. In the next moment, Remilia was crashing back into the front pew as Edwin descended on her. The knife pushed home, her own silver blade pinning her to the bench. As the pain throbbed through her shoulder, she could feel Sakuya waning as Edwin seemed to fill the space, becoming so much taller, so much broader in its absence.
"I thought it was you who had killed him." The servant girl directed her words to Edwin.
Remilia gritted her teeth, her fingers weakly tugging at the pommel of the silver knife in her shoulder as the scarecrow of a man grinned down at her, his stilt like limbs swollen with shadowy muscle. She knew then why he had not killed her outright. He would not be satisfied with Remilia's death alone.
This victory would only be complete with Sakuya's utter dependence.
Edwin's voice went soft and gentle as he turned to regard the servant girl. "Darling, you must know me by now, surely? You know I like to take 'em slow, tease it out? I savour the act. You would've had all the time in the world to convince me of my mistake, to persuade me to spare your beloved teacher… but for her."
Remilia gasped explosively as her hand slipped from the knife handle, her head hanging low.
"Tell me he's lying." The servant girl's broken voice lifted her head sharply.
Remilia swallowed, trying to master her grief and pain, knowing Edwin's strength waxed with both. She had lost too much blood for the Gungnir and her red magic. Even her ability to control her fate was fading. She couldn't see the roads, only two destinations; one where Remilia and Sakuya walked from this place, bloodied but unbowed. The other fate - clouded and flickering - showed a smudged, smiling creature, walking alone into the dark.
There was no snapping Sakuya out of her grief with the voice. She could lie to her, or browbeat her for even considering Edwin's words.
In the end, she tried to reach her plainly.
"He chose that path." Remilia gasped.
"To leave his loved one behind?!" Edwin retorted, incredulous.
"He knew we were about to die anyway."
"You know Jill, how she doted on you," Edwin entreated the servant girl, "She wouldn't have done this to you, my dear! She wouldn't have given the order!"
"I never intended, never wanted that for him!" Remilia tried to be heard over Edwin, but he was so much louder than she was, his voice oozing with spite. "Lies! All lies! Her last recourse before she dies beneath my blade! Or perhaps, beneath your blade. Your avenging blade."
Remilia blinked, seeing Edwin produce the vorpal blade, holding it out, her own blackened heart shrinking as the servant girl slowly took the proffered weapon. The grey-eyed girl felt the weight of the weapon, treating it with seeming reverence before she haltingly began her approach.
"Do you have anything else to say?" She asked as she reached the front pew, her voice a whisper as she stared down at the pinned vampire.
Remilia shuddered, the link between them communicating feelings that clashed with the menace in Sakuya's words and the grisly destiny in store for the both of them. "His fate was leashed to mine, but it was his choice to make, and he made me pay for it."
The silver-haired girl with the midnight blade pulled it back, preparing to thrust it home.
Remilia swallowed as tears stung her eyes. "I promised him that I'd save you, Sakuya," Her gaze flicked past the servant girl's gaze to Edwin and back again. "Don't let Edwin rule you-"
The vorpal blade darted forward. The once-man watching it all burst out laughing, deep and mocking, drinking deeply from the shock of betrayal, the heartache from his rival, the fury bleeding from his girl, not noticing at first how the emotion turned like changing wind.
The dark blade had slid effortlessly through the wooden backrest next to Remilia's ear. The vampire blinked tears from her eyes as she stared up into the worn expression on Sakuya's face. The maid left the vorpal blade in the pew as she took the silver in Remilia's shoulder and pulled it free.
Remilia groaned hard, her limbs shaking as the pain pulsed through her. Sakuya guided her into the crook of her neck, a sanguine sentiment passing between them, coaxing the vampire into action and giving her mistress permission.
Her fangs broke the skin, the maid silently enduring as Remilia took on some of her essence.
Only then did Edwin realise what was happening.
He depressed the plunger. The world stopped. He strode over, cursing the idiot daughter for believing the brat vampire about her pathetic old man. He reached over both of the girls to retrieve the blade that could cut anything, grasping the handle, twisting it free. All it would take is to drag the edge through Remilia's neck-
When the servant girl turned to regard him, he didn't react. He simply didn't believe he needed to. She was a battery, not a person, not a threat. She powered chronomancy, never displaying a talent for wielding it. She was his dumb, obedient creature.
He only realised things were wrong when he failed to find those subservient, dull-grey discs in the servant girl's eyes.
He kept on searching them until Sakuya's uppercut gashed through his arm, black ichor and red blood crescenting up before slowing in the frozen time.
He reeled back, his reclaimed blade slicing the air open in front of him. Sakuya hadn't pursued, standing stock still. Not an article of clothing shifted, not a hair waved in the air, her eyes staring at the space he had been in.
Time began as Remilia went limp on the bench, panting hard as her wound caught alight, using the blood to burn the silver out of her undead body, to cauterise the flesh, to mend.
Edwin knew he had to act. To prevent them cementing this alliance. He thought of what to say, he thought of throwing himself past the servant girl, with the watch if he had to, but Sakuya was there, suddenly alert, awake, her capabilities suddenly unknown and as extraordinary as his own.
"Sakuya, I'm sorry," Remilia gasped, "Know that. It was-"
"I would hear all that happened later," Sakuya cut through her words, taking a long step to put herself between Remilia and their foe, "But for now, if I've to make a choice on who to go with, I'd leave this place with you."
Remilia blinked, managing to smile as she heard and felt the maid's steady heartbeat. "I… I see."
"It is my responsibility alone to deal with this," Sakuya managed, her voice steadying as she addressed the mistress at her back, "but I would appreciate help from a friend. He is stronger than I am."
She heard Remilia's footsteps and a brush of leather on the back of her hand. She looked down, seeing the knife holster that Remilia offered her. Sakuya smiled in thanks as she strapped herself.
"And for all my monstrous strength, I cannot navigate his world." Remilia conceded, her thought-sent command urging Sakuya's attention to Edwin's left breast pocket and the chain that ran from the shadowy envelope to his hand.
"Let me be your guide then, my mistress." Sakuya proposed, savouring the death of Edwin's smile. Remilia pointed her grin at him as Gungnir hissed to life, her expression underlit by its scarlet light. "To the finish, then."
Even together, the two were uncoordinated, for all their ferocity. He let himself be beaten back, withdrawing until his back was to the altar table and the gleaming cross that sat atop it.
He let the vorpal blade slip from his grip.
"That's it!" Remilia declared, charging him.
"Don't!" Sakuya shouted, knowing Edwin as their adversary swept round-
The bejewelled cross in his hand slammed into Remilia's head, the sanctified strike shooting stars across her vision. Her ears rang. Blood ran from her nose. One knee buckled, her spear arm going limp for an instant. Even in her daze, she tried to aim the Gungnir. Sakuya was on Edwin, taking his attention, the master and maid noiselessly struggling in front of Remilia. She had a clean shot. Edwin could see that. All Remilia had to do was launch it, and at this range-
The shadow ripped itself free from Edwin's heels, lunging up and snapping around Remilia's head. Like the Lost Boys it had slain decades ago in Neverland, the spectre filled Remilia's jolted brain with dark visions of her past. Cobwebs and sundered tables. Crystallised tension and inertia. Empty rooms and torn teddy bears. Rage, tears, despair.
Remilia was suddenly alone in the dark place. It was quiet. It was lonely.
And it was peaceful.
She fell to all fours. She swayed back until she was sitting on her calves, sighing hard as fatigue washed over her. She tried to blink away the black.
"Sakuya?" She asked in a whisper. She groped the darkness for the Gungnir and felt nothing. She tried to will it to her hand, to invoke its bright fury. There wasn't even a sputter. She had to get up.
But to what end? For what purpose?
Her chin began to drop at the thought of getting up. Her eyelids grew heavy, the exhaustion pulling on her, the thought of lying down suddenly intoxicating. She began to sway, to keel to one side, to give in.
"Mistress!"
The muted scream woke her up, her eyes widening as she saw shapes wrestling with one another. She saw Sakuya's obscured features in the murky shadows, watched her beat back the black as gloved fists rained down on her, beating blood from her mouth.
In an eye blink, the fight was pushed into the background, her vision interfered with by a new figure. Remilia had half-expected a visage of Sakuya, or perhaps one of her friends. Of Flandre, Patchouli, Meiling, of mister Osbourne.
Instead, within that inky darkness, she saw her. Blonde hair. Olivia? No, the stranger wore a purple dress, white gloves, and an insufferable, contemptible smirk that communicated one thing to Remilia.
Is that all you've got?
Remilia didn't know where the knife had come from, but she swept its reassuring weight up towards those insufferable golden eyes.
The shadow-beast shrieked as its prey bit back, its dark membrane convulsing and collapsing around Remilia as she pulled the smothering thing off, pulled it tight, pulled it apart.
She did it in time to see Sakuya on her knees, cradling her bruised arm. Edwin loomed over her, the cross shaking in his hands as he prepared to bludgeon the very person he ached to control to death.
"Hey!" Remilia barked, fire and lightning bursting to life in her hands.
Edwin turned in time to see Lævateinn curve into a sadistic, toothy grin as the Gungnir laid across its stave, rumbling with its master's rage.
One of his hands flew to his left breast pocket.
The scarlet arrow fired from the crimson bow with enough force to crater the flagstones beneath its passing. The altar beside them crumpled as though kicked through by a giant. The windows of the cathedral exploded, filling the air with coloured glass as the Gungnir ruptured mid-flight into a blazing wall of multi-coloured light.
That light only backlit the shadow of Edwin Barnes as his vorpal blade dove beneath the mob cap, got in Remilia's face and went right through it.
"No!" Sakuya screamed out. Edwin barked out an exultant laugh, regretting the noise as he got a good look at his victim. She was shaped like Remilia and wore her mob cap, but her face was formed around the abnormal, yellowed eye of Lævateinn. The contracted pupil stared unblinking at him as the girlish shape around it sloughed away in a flash of crimson light.
As the Lævateinn was banished back to its true owner, a hatless Remilia rose behind it, her shoulder going back as the glaring silhouette of the Gungnir spilled over her.
Edwin reflexively pushed the plunger as she made her throw.
Time slowed to a crawl. He laughed shakily as he studied Remilia's still, savage expression. He could sidestep the oncoming projectile - but nothing would rob her of her confidence quite like seeing him standing resolute before her diffused attack. Nothing would invoke more fear in her than that. Nothing would satisfy him more.
In one hand, lazily, he guided the vorpal blade through the scarlet bolt of light, frowning when he felt neither heat nor aftershock. His black blade bit down on something, sliding almost effortlessly through the centre of the silhouetted spear, feeling neither the hair-raising electricity of the Gungnir nor the matter-macerating sharpness of Remilia's red magic.
His blade sliced into wood.
A hand-carved wooden button.
Through a trick of the light, she had made him waste his lull in time to dissect a useless wooden button.
He leant back as instinct warned him, snarling as one of Sakuya's knives glanced off with enough force to chip his cheek, hammering a half-second's hesitation down his legs. He looked back to Remilia as time resumed.
She was already done chambering the real, unerring Gungnir.
"Christ!" Edwin shouted, leaping back as he struck out with the vorpal blade at that which threatened his face and heart. Remilia saw the frenzied parry, smelling the singed wood that told her that her gambit had succeeded.
Thank you, mister Osbourne.
"Go far, Sakuya!" Remilia screamed as she hurled the Gungnir.
Edwin saw nothing but scarlet light as the spear leapt to meet him.
The Gungnir failed to strike his knife hand. It missed his torso entirely. Against all odds, at this short range, it seemed the point of the All-father's spear had failed at the crucial moment to hit him at all.
Until the point of the spear threaded the needle between the chainlinks of the pocket watch. The chain went taut for a millisecond before it broke, the watch carried towards the holed wall of the cathedral before it slipped the speartip and sailed through the air. Edwin turned to it in a panic, knowing the legend of spring-heeled Jack guaranteed its recovery ahead of his treacherous servant girl.
He almost dislocated his neck on the wrap of scarlet chain. He looked back, saw Remilia's looped chain around his neck and her hand, and the way she cackled then…. He rounded on her, cutting his captor's laughter off as his pommel smashed down on her nose.
"Bitch!" He screamed, slamming down on her with a fist as the other yanked around the chain collar she held. She didn't let go, her hands grasping him. He realised that she had his knife hand just as he tried to turn the blade on her, but her grip was like iron. She went growling into the wrestling match as his free hand gave up on the chain and pounded down on her cheek, her eye, her chin, wanting her to stop, wanting her to die, wanting to escape. One strike, two, a third punch made Remilia flinch, yelping childishly as something gave beneath his fist and her hold on him spasmed.
He twisted his hand free, thrusting down with his weapon to finish her.
Remilia disappeared beneath him, his point splitting the flagstone.
"No," Edwin breathed, righting himself, seeing his wingless, wounded prey standing a distance away from him, shepherded by her.
The maid stood behind Remilia, a hand on one shoulder, the other holding the blood-stained pocket watch, a thumb depressing the plunger. Her glassy eyes seemed to stare right through Edwin.
Remilia shook as her borrowed blood restored her. Her wounds closed to leave scars, her skin healing until blotches and faded bruises remained. She wouldn't spend her vitality to appease her vanity, nor did she repair her wings. She had no intention of running.
He closed the distance, thrusting the weapon forward. He couldn't afford to spare the girl now.
With a push of the watch's crown, the unstoppable vorpal blade was stopped. The cold light of his eyes moved frantically, searching Sakuya's for any degree of familiarity as she averted her gaze, not out of fear, but to direct her attention to her mistress.
As Sakuya slid free from the frozen time and took her mistress beyond his reach, Edwin burned to follow her. To scream at her. To beat her down for making him feel this way. Even as he managed to break briefly free, she was moving beyond him.
Time resumed. The girls vanished before his black blade could touch them, the anger at having them just out of reach leaving him cursing them both.
Sakuya and Remilia stood before the altar, bloodied but unbowed, and though their attention and weapons were on him, their words were for each other.
"I'll understand," Remilia said softly, "if you would have this be our last time associating with one another, Sakuya."
"If I might suggest we discuss this after I've done away with the garbage?" Sakuya suggested as she smiled wearily to Remilia.
Remilia's soft smile sank as she caught Edwin's eye, her expression replaced with an easy malice. Her red eyes glanced sidelong at her friend. "I'll join you. I feel I owe the wastrel a degree of payback."
The third voice scraped itself on the moment like a blade on a chain. "She's not yours to own, you bitch! She's mine! You belong to me! LOOK AT ME!" Edwin bellowed out his attempt to cow them. They would heed him. Either one. Someone…
Won't someone listen to me?
The two girls turned on him as his voice wobbled weakly through the holed cathedral. Sakuya stared at him with rigorously controlled contempt as her thumb let the crown of the pocket watch lift into position. "Refrain from speaking to the lady in such a way."
That's when he realised he had lost her, the next spoken words stealing the breath from him.
"I think it's time," Remilia said coolly as her knives turned in her hands, "That we draw a line under this business once and for all, Sakuya."
"As you command," Sakuya agreed, pressing the plunger.
The two girls were tired. Sakuya was faint from giving blood, and Remilia was running on fumes.
But the way they fought - compared to earlier - was like night and day. Sakuya came alive, cancelling his every advantage with her father's pocket watch and matching his every knife swing with mansion silver. Whenever Edwin came close to regaining the upper hand, Remilia was there, cackling like a hellion and hammering him across the tiles, off his feet, to the brink of panic…
Edwin's smiling mask rattled now as he gasped beneath it, terror-wrought muscle melting off of his jacket sleeves as he was gradually outfought. He retreated upwards, hounded across the upper galleries as he fought desperately with both ornate cross and vorpal knife. After a dozen exchanges, his dark blade caught Sakuya's weapon cleanly, shearing the last of her silver knives and sending the tip spinning over the railing and down into the nave. Exultant to see Sakuya wide open, he leaned in, springing forward-
Sakuya glared at him as she depressed the plunger. Realising his mistake, he tried to slow, to stop, to redirect.
But Sakuya had caught him on his charge. All he could do was perceive what was happening as they both drifted into her world. He watched her pull the damaged knife back with two hands. He desperately stared at her as she pitilessly returned his momentum to him, her broken knife bluntly plunging into his unmoving mask of a face.
Time resumed, and Edwin's smile was gone forever.
His mask shattered like bone china. The once-man staggered back from the blow, his hands leaping to his face as pain and trauma conquered him. An animal scream escaped his lips as an unfamiliar agony branched through his nose, his hands coming away to survey the damage-
His unblemished, callow features stared out through the hole in the facade, seeing his tainted blood on his white gloves.
He wailed as he turned from the girls and raced for the stairs, holding his ruined face together as he ran.
That stirred the vampire from her shock.
"He's escaping!" Remilia shouted, taking off after him, pausing when she felt the flicker across their bond.
Sakuya had taken a knee, almost blacking out. She was panting like a dog, her eyes half-lidded with fatigue. But she was smiling, her right hand clenched, mottled with the blood of her captor.
"Go. I'll catch up," She promised, a hand already moving to draw another blade, the maid stirring from her exhaustion as her fingers groped the empty holster. Before she could say anything, one of Remilia's knives was already clattering on the stone between them. The vampire afforded her a smile before she turned to follow Edwin.
"You better!" She shouted back to Sakuya as she charged on.
His pained howling briefly stopped as he got out onto the cathedral's roof and under the red sky. He hurriedly looked across his city, seeing the fire-husked remnants of his chateau. It was gone. His hunting grounds, his home, his world, all made alien by the storm.
He would start fresh elsewhere. Find malleable sorts, bend them to his will. Retreat, rebuild, revenge himself. He shuddered, a heel mounting the balustrade, setting to take off into the innumerable, indistinguishable rows of housing below-
He felt something lash around his left hand and go rigid. He looked down, seeing the chain around his wrist glow scarlet.
He yanked his left impotently. He started to dry-heave, the hive-buzz of real panic firing behind the eyes as he was compelled to turn and face his fate.
He saw the small, snow-white fist slowly emerge from the shadows of the staircase, the chain held firmly in its grip, followed by the wrist, the arm-
His bottom lip wobbled, a piteous sound breaking from him as she stepped into the red light. Gone was the little girl, the victim, the charlatan. Before him advanced Remilia Scarlet. The crimson countess. The Scarlet Devil.
"Found you," Remilia said contemptuously.
He tried to smile. "S-show me mercy, miss Remilia. As you did my sister, I beg you. You have shown me your strength, now show me your wisdom, eh? Extend me this courtesy, from-from one monster to another…" He pleaded, wide-eyes watching as Remilia drifted after him. She raised the chain in her closed fist, seeming to toy with it, letting it swing round and round like a skipping rope.
"I shall show you my wisdom now, mister Barnes," She promised, flicking the chain up, letting it drop around her tensed wrist as she seized more of it, pulled-
Edwin was almost ripped from his feet. Desperately, he pulled back.
"Miss Jill showed that she was reasonable in the square. Her outrage in the veteran's hall told me she was peaceable. Her behaviour at the end told me she had been misled by your… bewitchment." Remilia observed.
"You have it wrong," Edwin gasped, "She was the one to change me-"
"I'm not finished!" Remilia's voice snapped with her wrenching fist, pulling Edwin closer by another yard. "You however, you showed yourself easily crossed. Easily angered. Given to vengeance and betrayal."
Another flick, another pull, and the gap closed between them.
"You are neither reasonable nor peaceable, mister Barnes. You are reliably unreliable. You are an enemy on my flank. A dagger in my back. Even if I leave London tonight, your fury will follow us sooner or later. Because you won't be able to bear that I beat you at your own game, on your own ground," Remilia said quietly, barely heard over the distant thunder, pausing for a moment as realisation dawned. She stared at Barnes' porcelain-framed soft features, poisoned into that hard, wounded expression. She saw a thwarted rage that was painfully familiar.
Her fingers clenched on the chain as she recalled the stricken features of his victims, the lives that hung in the balance.
"You possess neither the virtues of nobility nor the will of the monstrous, mister Barnes. You're a frightened, cruel little boy swaddled in the infamy of the Ripper, the Spring-Heeled; the run-off of humanity. 'One monster to another'," She scoffed, "If I'm a monster, you're roach-flesh."
Remilia watched as Edwin's nostrils flared, her ears picking up his rampaging heartbeat as she judged this last dance. She would yank him one way and cut another. She would keep ahead of that life-ending knife of his. She would-
She saw Edwin physically tense, telegraphing his mad rush.
"Have at you!" She crowed, pulling him off-balance as she charged him.
The avengers of Mihnea rode fast and hard through the streets of London.
"Death!" Ruxandra cackled, the edged fuller of Bloodthirster filling with blood as the blade swept through the shoulder of an enforcer. Even as the man fell, his vitae drained from his corpse, following after the tip of her sword like a streamer in a parade. Her undead cavalry rode with her under the red sky, killing any of Barnes' men in their path. They did not care that they were allies, that they had been invited to this ground. They were close to their prize, close enough to sense her, to taste her, to pull her head from her shoulders. They got in the killing mood ahead of time. They would start the victory feast early, and they would stop for no-one.
There, over slated, steepled roofs. A cathedral, a commanding monument to a hateful god. That was where Remilia Scarlet was.
"Onward, for the traitor's head!" Ruxandra bellowed as the steed beneath her crushed a man in its path. No mortal would stop her from claiming her birthright.
With every turn, every exchange, every slice, more of their blood slashed across the rooftop. Remilia fought as though she was possessed, her weapon scraping off of Edwin's as her other hand controlled the fight, slackening and tugging the chain to keep him unsteady. She could hear his demented breathing, see his pinprick pupils and the way he unravelled, from his composure to his knifework.
She underestimated his desperation as he rushed her, his rage throwing her to the railing. Her blade narrowly caught the cross he brought down, her chained hand stopping his knife hand at the wrist. He heaved down, her ailing strength barely keeping her from falling, barely keeping his weapons where they were, barely keeping her in the fight. Her eyes flitted around, searching for an angle, an ally, a way to turn this. She saw-
She saw what would happen if she died to Edwin here.
She saw herself on the cathedral steps, lifeless, Edwin soon joining her, and above them both stood someone, neither servant girl nor Sakuya. Grey hair, grey eyes, silver slivers in hand, insanely smiling.
The penny dropped.
With a feral roar, Remilia fought him all the harder, their hands shaking as she started to inch him up and off of her.
Edwin slowly crossed his arms together, a spittle-laden grin warping his youthful features as he prepared to shunt the unstoppable knife through Remilia's face. She gritted her teeth. She'd have to dodge it. Fight it. Take him over the edge, even if it killed her, if only to prevent-
She heard a rush of footsteps behind her assailant.
"Don't!" Remilia cried out.
Sakuya howled as she charged into him, her blade powering into and up Edwin's back, driving him forward into Remilia.
The momentum was too much. The once-man's leg spasmed and caught Sakuya's jaw in the flurry as he went over the railing with Remilia in a tangle of limbs. The undead princess lost her knife. She caught the balustrade, her chain-wrapped hand going for Edwin's wrist.
She whimpered as the pain lanced through her arms.
Edwin's mouth opened and closed as he dangled beneath Remilia's hand, confusion and pain breaking his expression briefly.
"W-Why?" He asked. Why now had Remilia saved him?
He looked up, realising he had misjudged her intentions. He gasped as he felt something pierce his chest, his fingers going slack in Remilia's grip as the ghostly polearm drifted itself into being in her grip, the shaft replacing the chain and clearing his arm, the speartip manifesting inside of his chest…
His heart hammered like hell as he felt his chest catch fire, his fingers reflexively slackening in hers. His eyes leapt from the weapon to the tired, scornful gaze of the vampire maiden.
This wasn't fair.
That was the last hateful thought he had that powered through his pain, that let him lift the vorpal knife and lunge upwards for Remilia's heart.
The last Gungnir fired downwards, ripping the thing that had been Edwin Barnes from Remilia's grasp and casting him down. He struck the earth like a meteor, his scream of frustration turning wild as his body was wreathed in a roaring cross of scarlet fire. Remilia Scarlet didn't take her eyes off of the conflagration. Not until it was over. Not until his scream vanished on the wind, and all that was left of him was baked into the steps of the cathedral.
She tried to look up to the railing her hand clung to, suddenly conscious of her stripped wings. The fall would finish her - or put her in a place to die easily beneath the swords of Edwin's reinforcements. She tried to find the strength to pull herself up, to find a screed of the blood to fuel herself to climb.
But she was empty. She felt her fingers barely hanging on to the stone rail. She thought of the one who needed her the most, hoping to find something.
Still, nothing.
"...Oh, Flan," Remilia sighed, her eyes drifting shut, her fingers coming closer to slipping.
She let go.
"No!"
The shout shocked her awake as a hand clapped on Remilia's wrist. She looked up and there was Sakuya, gripping her wrist in both hands.
"Sakuya," Remilia slurred, seeing the way the maid leaned far for her, " Don't overreach yourself. Not on my account."
Sakuya gave her a strained smile. "It's alright, mistress. I won't let you fall."
Remilia's eyes shone as she recognised the words. Her own hand went up to the stone, helping the maid pull her up.
She almost cleared the railing when she saw the tall shadow that stood behind Sakuya.