Chapter 48: Old Rivals, New Enemies

Maritza heard Ronan shout for her as she rolled backwards, then regained her footing in a standing position. The Shroud’s Runes coated half her body, and along with one of her eyes becoming black, the large black butterfly wing had protruded from her shoulder. She had saved herself by amplifying her Butterfly magic with The Shroud, but she was feeling the weight of using such power. Already, she wanted nothing more than to fall to her stomach and pass out, or allow her knees to buckle.

She panted, and the smokescreen her marking had created started to clear.

“Ronan!” she called out. “I’m okay! Finish off the dragon.”

Ronan stood past the clearing smoke, his sword raised with both hands. He got a clear look at Maritza, safe, then darted off towards the dragon circling the sky overhead.

That left Maritza with only her opponent.

The rest of the smoke dissipated, and Wallace was kneeling in a small crater from where he had landed with his hand around his sword. His sword’s blade trickled black sludge to the ground, and the dirt was stained black by his weapon, as if it infected the very soil itself. Illia ran over while he was hunched and standing up. She swung her dagger at his flank but he swatted her away with the back of his free wrist, almost like he had predicted her movement. Illia took the knock to the jaw well, but had to immediately dodge the thrust of another curved Butterfly sword, this one held by another purple-cloaked warrior. An Order warrior had broken away from fighting Clove and Ike to try and take out Illia while she was distracted.

But his attacks where sloppy compared to Illia's.

Illia got in close with her dagger and stabbed the Order member in the thigh before he could get off his next attack.

The man hollered out and his hood fell down. He wore a white mask over the burns on his face, and black veins lined the side of his neck.

“Alfred,” Maritza mumbled to herself, both angered and not surprised to see him cowering behind a newfound power like The Shroud.

Wallace slid a hand to his slicked back hair, smoothing it all out down to the last strand.

He grinned at Maritza and laughed, “Look at you with that wing and eye! You’re a monster. An abomination! You have no control over this gift!”

To Illia’s surprise, Alfred swept at her horizontally with his sword faster than she had imagined him capable of doing so. She ducked, leaving her dagger in his thigh, then held her hand outward. It turned a frosty blue and an icicle as thick as a sword emitted from her palm, and she grasped like she had her dagger.

“I’ll take this one,” Illia said to Maritza. “You take the leader.”

Alfred ripped the dagger from his thigh, threw it to the ground and shouted, “It’ll take more than that to kill me!”

He flipped towards Illia, spinning so fast he was like a saw to wood when he smashed against her icicle, shattering it. Illia retrieved her dagger from the ground and engaged Alfred once more.

“Do you hear that?” Wallace said, nudging his head in the direction of Alfred and Illia’s fight. “She called me ‘The Leader.’ Do you remember being a leader, Maritza? Because by the looks of it, you’ve forgotten a lot.”

He chuckled and added, “Even how to eat, apparently.”

Maritza fought her body’s urge to collapse.

“Save your petty words,” she said, “and tell me why you’re using The Shroud when you once condemned it.”

Wallace tore off the remainder of his cloak. His legs were nothing more than large, black metal grieves. They shimmered with the same malevolent sheen as Ronan’s Hellblade in the distance, pattering against the dragon’s skin, trying to make a hole in the scales.

“When you left me in the streets,” Wallace said, a ferocity in his too-wide eyes, “I couldn’t so much as move after your little rat of a boyfriend Ronan set my legs on fire.”

In what looked like Maritza to be only a single step, Wallace had launched himself at her. She had only enough time to raise her sword in front of her face, and luckily she had defended against his strike, though it was taking her more than everything she had to do so.

“Now look at me,” Wallace smiled. His breath, which had once smelled like parsley and strawberries at their council meetings, smelled of moldy pork.

They tore their blades from the lock, and Maritza heard The Shroud whisper, “You’re not one of us.”

Her vision started to double, and cold sweat trickled down her face.

“How did you get The Shroud?” she asked, drawing herself more time. She needed a way to defeat Wallace swiftly, before The Shroud’s transformation sapped her of what little strength she had remaining.

“You could say the power came to us,” Wallace laughed.

Again, in a blink he was right next to Maritza. This time he went for diagonal slash, and while Maritza had stopped his sword before it cut through her neck, she still suffered a harsh cut on the shoulder.

She exhaled, and her double-vision continued to cloud her view. Maritza bashed the pommel of her sword against Wallace’s nose, cracking it as she had in the alley of Augustate. She went to thrust her sword through his heart but he was too quick; Wallace stomped her foot with his giant metal greaves, crushing the leather of her boot into her toes. Maritza wailed as she felt a toenail dislodge, and had only enough good grace left about her to push her body away from Wallace’s. Still, his blade nicked her stomach, and she panted.

Her mouth went dry.

Wallace shook his head and said, “Not everybody can accept The Shroud’s power.”

“You are still not one of us,” The Shroud whispered to Maritza. The very words stung her ears and made them ring. She coughed up blood.

“I was born with it!” Maritza shouted. “This is the curse of my family!”

The black butterfly wing on her shoulder wilted, then fell to the ground beside her, nearly toppling her over with it.

Wallace was suffering from a fit of laughter. “You don’t actually believe that you were born with this, do you? Is that what your father told you?”

Wallace then got serious and continued, “There are a handful of people born by The Shroud. But I’ve seen what the Black Blades can do. They’ve given me their knowledge. And you, Maritza, were not born with The Shroud. You’re a nasty little noble who fell into a Hellsworn nest when you were young. You just don’t remember it because you’ve clouded your mind with delusions of grandeur.”

Maritza grit her teeth. The more furious she got at Wallace, the more strength she felt igniting in her. Her vision wasn’t as foggy when she screamed, “You’re lying! My father had The Shroud!”

“Your father had debt!” Wallace said, shaking his head and biting his lip so he wouldn’t be possessed by more laughter. “Your nothing more than a useless girl who needed a stupid little story to keep you going. Otherwise, you would’ve been dangling from a noose like your father by now.”

Wallace prodded two fingers to the side of his head and cackled, “I’ve seen it all. I’m with The Shroud now. I’m one of them. You’re a girl who got sick after falling in a pit when she was young. You’re hardly even a noble. And now you’re nothing!”

Maritza let out a blood curdling scream that made Wallace put his sword up in front of him.

She thought about his words, about using the legend of the chosen one to keep her going through her heartache, and how she felt so out of place, and unequal to those around her.

Her hands shook.

Now, that would all change.

She shut her eyes and said, “Always you have told me I’m not one of you.”

The Shroud stopped the ringing in her ears.

“But tell me what I must do to become one of you, and I’ll do it.”

Maritza could hear her own heart beating and her jaw tensed as she awaited a response.

Finally, The Shroud whispered, “To be more than nothing, you must be one of us, and to be one of us, you must EMBRACE US. Never have you given us your full self.”

Hungry for more power, or maybe just so furious she needed to put Wallace down, Maritza mumbled, “Fine. I’ll offer everything I have to you if you lend me some of your strength.”

The Shroud discussed in their hundreds of muffled voices.

“We determine that you are sincere,” it said. “But you must pledge to never doubt our word again.”

“Never again,” she said quickly.

“So be it.”

Maritza felt a burning on her shoulder, and the Runes slipped away and off her skin, only to take the shape of black veins along her body. A second black butterfly wing of Essence grew out of her other shoulder, and together the two wings flapped her to her feet.

“We will guide you, and you will serve us,” The Shroud said victoriously. “Kill this one, and absorb his Essence.”

Had Maritza been of a more solid state of mind, then perhaps she would’ve shown distress at the thought of absorbing another person’s aura, Corrupted or not. But her wings flapped and as Wallace had done to her, she appeared inches in front of him, and slammed a knee to his stomach hard enough to send him flying.

Wallace rolled along the ground, wheezing.

Maritza stood strong, surrounded by black Essence.

“Get up, Wallace,” she said with no emotion whatsoever.

Wallace readied his sword, and black veins took over both their bodies.

The two shouted and met blades.