443: A2
“C-c-commander…” the soldiers were left speechless as they watched Asuna’s body slowly fall to the ground, leaving three arcs of blood behind her from her deep wounds inflicted by the big-titty assassin. It was surreal for the soldiers to watch their princess in such a state. How could a murdered princess fall so gracefully and look so at peace? Without a sign of life, with her eyes closed, Asuna fell as if in slow motion, with her arms slightly at a distance from her hips, all but floating in the air a little above the ground with her long claymore falling at her right side.
“You’ll pay for this!!” one of the soldiers shouted and ran at Beatrice, drawing his spear and aiming it right between Beatrice’s big titties.
“KLHUEKH!?” that same soldier suddenly coughed blood and stopped in his tracks before he even reached Beatrice.
Shocked and confused, the soldier looked at the princess’s killer. She was still out of melee range. And rather than revealing a victorious grin after a cheap sneak attack with a throwing knife or something, the soldier’s would-be opponent was just as shocked as he was. The soldier looked down and saw a familiar blade, drenched in red liquid, sticking out of his chest after passing through where his heart should have been.
The soldier’s world quickly darkened. He did not yet know how little life was left within him and that he stayed upright only because of the blade he was impaled upon. Neither did he realize how quickly he was robbed of his senses. With his hearing and sense of pain already gone, his vision was next on the way out.
The soldier slowly turned his head to see what had happened, but only saw more darkness. A floating, spreading darkness engulfed a young girl with rust-colored hair. A familiar girl with unfamiliar predatory eyes.
A girl that was supposed to be dead. A girl that was his commander. A girl with her issues and problems like all girls, but one that took great pride in her position and always made sure to be a shining example of a soldier’s outward appearance, reliability, and utter confidence. A girl of who the soldier thought on many lonely nights. A girl for who the soldier would have given his life. A girl that took his life without hesitation or emotion.
What the fuck!? Beatrice watched how the soldier withered away, turning into a dry husk upon a supposedly dead princess’s blade that literally and visibly sucked the blood and life out of the dying body in a form of dark-red mist and like a conduit transferred that life force to its haunted wielder.
“What is this new devilry?” Carl asked Ember, looking in utter disbelief at the princess engulfed in darkness. A supernatural foe that never even hit the ground after receiving three lethal stabs, one of them through her neck. Carl couldn’t even see the wound in Asuna’s neck, only a thicker layer of darkness around it.
“HYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!” a ball of dark fury approached the eunuchs and Ember from behind.
Ember only had the time to turn around to the hateful cry of a slighted girl before the hamaxe-wielding, engulfed in darkness pink-haired princess howled, “HAMMER FALL!!!” and swung down her hammer right on top of Ember’s head.
Carl, Liam, and Jeremy were blown away by the shockwave of an explosion that made the walls and pillars tremble, shattered nearly every piece of glass in the entire hall, and blew away all the smoke and fire in a forty feet radius around Annie, instead launching a thick cloud of dust and stone.
When the dust settled, only a single figure remained in a crater that was even larger crater than the one created with the previous “Hammer Fall”.
Like Asuna, the pink-haired princess was permanently surrounded by a swirling dark mist that she secreted out of her pores instead of sweat. Her posture was slouched, her breathing heavy, her motions more animalistic than human. Her eyes—the only source of light amongst the darkness, bright like a predator’s at night.
Annie lifted her hammer to see the remains of the insolent, fire-spewing mage but saw only a couple of dying flames where Ember’s body was supposed to be.
“GHRAAAAAAARHH!!” Annie swung her hammer and crushed the tiny flames with disproportionate force.