Chapter Text
Midwinter snow and ash from the destroyed furnace mingled in the air as they fell, dyeing the landscape an even more desolate, depressing gray than normal. Innumerable corpses lay strewn about, some stacked in meters-tall piles. The battlefield had already been mostly scavenged of any useful materials – damaged weapons and armor taken for their metal to put ramshackle buildings together, scraps of cloth patched together for new clothing. Nothing the Sarkaz hadn’t experienced hundreds, thousands of times before.
If Theresa were a Nachzehrer, she might not hate it so much. The inescapable stench of death pervading the valley, the blood and melting snow forming a thick mire, the almost palpable wailing of the myriad souls. But she was here specifically because she hated it. To remind herself of everything they lost, so that she’d never let it happen again.
She’d been coming back to this dreadful place every day since the battle ended. Sometimes she’d find a survivor and do her best to heal them with her arts. Oftentimes she was too late. Today, she thought she was the only living person gazing across the newly-formed wasteland. But just as she was about to leave for where the remaining Sarkaz had made a temporary camp, she saw a figure in the distance. At first, she wanted to call out to them and tell them to return to safety in the camp, especially with how insufficient their ragged clothing was for the weather. But as she looked closer, it became clear the figure wasn’t a Sarkaz, but a Feline. A white-haired Feline woman.
Alarm bells went off in her mind, but she quickly put them to rest. The enemy commander was dead; it wasn’t possible that this was the same woman. Still, what should she do? The Feline could be a surviving coalition soldier searching for resources, or just an unfortunate local who happened to get caught up in the war. There was no telling how she’d react to a Sarkaz approaching her. She decided to observe the figure more before doing anything else.
As she got closer, the Feline seemed to remain completely unaware of her presence, only walking around and stopping to crouch down at various corpses. She initially thought the woman was looting what little remained on them, but as she got closer it was clear she was strangely only inspecting the fallen soldiers’ faces, well preserved by the cold. Even stranger was that she seemingly made no distinction between which army the soldiers had come from, pausing at both Sarkaz and Ancients’ remains to pay her respects, or whatever exactly it was she was doing.
Then she saw the woman's own face and had to stifle a gasp; It really was, without a doubt, the commander that had led the invading army. She would've thought the woman was reveling in the death and destruction she had caused if the look on her face wasn't more emotionless than the bodies littered on the ground around her.
Theresa couldn’t hold herself back. She readied her Arts as she stopped her approach, now within earshot. "How – how are you alive?! I saw Theresis cut off your head!" Just the thought of such violence used to be enough to make her wretch. Now, she’d barely bat an eye. She hated it, and she hated the woman in front of her for making her like that.
Said woman stood up and faced her. She remained disturbingly deadpan, apparently not caring that she was being watched. Her eyes narrowed in recognition of her enemy. "You're..."
The commander drew the sword that hung at her waist with muddied hands. Theresa braced herself for her to charge, for that hulking monster to burst out of the ground somewhere nearby. But instead, she found the woman had simply thrown her sword down into the muck and snow.
"I surrender."
"...What?" This had to be a feint, some attempt to throw her off guard so she could close the distance unassailed. She kept her guard up.
"I couldn't defeat you with three nations' armies behind me, how would I expect to do it weak and alone?" She stayed silent before the woman continued. "Do with me what you will. Exile me, imprison me...if you really wanted it, you could kill me again, though I think you know now that that wouldn't accomplish much. If you're willing to give me a say in the matter, I think I'd most like to help rebuild Kazdel."
What kind of sick game was she playing? “You expect me to believe that?! You're the one who destroyed Kazdel in the first place!” She felt her pulse and breathing quickening even more than they already had. “If I took you back, you’d just attack me when I’m not looking, or burn the camp down when we got there!”
The Feline put her hands out together in front of her body. “I won’t. Restrain me however you’d like. If you wish, I’ll wait for you to call for backup and you can escort me back together.”
She must be stalling, waiting for an opportunity. “And what about that monster you control, how will I know you won’t summon it and try to kill us all?”
The woman’s face flashed with some unidentifiable emotion, but in the next moment it was gone. She reached into her makeshift excuse for clothing and pulled out a small black bipyramidal crystal that looked remarkably like a piece of pure originium. “Even if I wanted that, it wouldn’t happen anytime soon.” After a few seconds, she put it back before expectantly extending her arms out in front of her again.
That nearly ten-meter tall monster, now something small enough to be held in one hand? How laughable. This woman couldn’t be trusted. She was an even bigger monster than that thing was. Theresa should bind her up in a dungeon and keep her imprisoned forever. She should take her back to Kazdel to make a public example of what should be done to those who wrong the Sarkaz. She should kill her, so thoroughly and utterly destroy her so that she’d never be able to come back and wreak havoc like this ever again.
No. She would detain her with her Arts and use the Black Crown to see what kind of lies she was spouting before she made the final decision. The threads of her Arts wrapped around the Feline’s wrists and ankles. The woman continued to stare back at her, completely unfeeling, despite how tightly Theresa had made sure the binding was.
She shut her eyes. She still wasn’t used to the power of the Lord of Fiends, and it was difficult to concentrate on keeping the Feline’s limbs bound while simultaneously forming a connection to her mind.
When she finally got through, it was unlike anyone else she’d used the Crown on before. There were no concrete memories, no proudest moments, no deepest regrets. Only towering mountains, fathomless oceans, and interminable deserts of grief, sorrow, and loneliness. It was disorienting, overwhelming, even painful, maintaining the link. What little snippets of the woman’s past she could see were all horrible sights, only there as if to say ‘Don’t make mistakes like these again’. She eventually managed to find why exactly the woman had been examining corpses earlier: she was committing all their faces to memory. She was reminding herself that each and every one of these people had had wildly differing, complex lives until she cut them short. Then Theresa found what the woman had been feeling when she confronted her: not a hint of malice or deception. Only exhaustion, and somehow, determination.
Her knees hit the cold, wet ground. Even her first time using the Crown on the entirety of the Sarkaz camp hadn’t been this overpowering. She didn’t notice she had let the bindings on the commander slip until she was standing right in front of her. Theresa half-expected that the woman was about to kill her, that somehow she had tricked even the Black Crown. Instead of a dagger in the chest, she got a hand offering to help her up.
“What is your name, new King of Sarkaz?”
She was still dazed. “…Theresa. And yours, my enemy?”
“Kal’tsit. It’s been a long time since I’ve had someone use that power on me,” she said in halfway-apology. Just how old was this strange woman? Her face was the most emotive Theresa had seen it yet, yet still only barely showing her pity and compassion.
She wanted to slap her hand away, to leave her for dead in the cold and never see her again. But this hatred, this eternal cycle of revenge, that’s why this had all happened in the first place. She would be better. She had to be better. She had to try to understand. To forgive.
She took Kal’tsit’s hand, only then realizing she hadn’t severed the mental link between them. Now, buried deep under the suffering she had endured, there was the slightest, most infinitesimal sliver of something akin to hope.