Reiden quickly stood up, both hands on the hilts of his weapons.
"Who…?!" The mercenary leader's question was inconclusive, as he momentarily lost his voice at the sight of this new threat about to invade the area. "Arms ready! Bran, Melion, protect Madame Luchie! Dom and Lufreya, to me!"
The mercenaries reacted instantly: with the great axe in hand and the power crystal at the tip of his wands glowing, Bran and Melian, respectively, covered the distraught old woman; Dom brandished his flamberge, and Lufreya loaded her crossbow with a drum of arrows, both going to their leader, who drew his parrying dagger and his bastard sword. The three walked several steps to block the advance of this rider clad in terrifying black steel armor, like her dark steed with glowing red eyes.
She wielded a large, curved sword in her right hand, and in her left, she clutched a head protected by a black full-helm wrapped in an aura of Discord.
Her own head.
"Grrr!"
The vilecrosses didn't wait for their masters' commands and launched an attack. Tristessa had to drop to the ground to avoid being run over by the two giant demonic beasts; both roared furiously and intended to tear both rider and horse to pieces with their massive arms, razor-sharp claws, and jaws made to rend even the hardest metal. The lesser vilecrosses weren't far behind, attacking in a pack as well.
The steed made of shadows whinnied, and its rider raised her left arm, revealing her helmeted head to all present. It let out a high-pitched, ethereal shriek that filled the souls of every living thing nearby with pure terror.
"Ugh...!" Tristessa felt that war cry with a deep pain in her chest, while the mercenaries made a great effort not to cover their ears and lower their guard. She searched inside her backpack and found her hunting knife. Her only means to defend herself, unskilled as she was. "F-fuck…!"
Along with the suffocating miasma of darkness surrounding it, that dark helmeted-head managed to stop the demonic creatures in their tracks, which had a fatal impact: the rider advanced with inhuman speed, her steed swifter than the wind and becoming one with the darkness of the night.
In that atmosphere of gaseous shadows, the rider charged at the stunned vilecross demons, slicing their necks with two swift slashes and scattering a shower of blood everywhere. Pained grunts followed the collapse of their lifeless bodies. The vilcrosses hadn't even finished falling before the rider moved grimly toward the pack of their lesser kind and with swift, precise slashes, reduced them to five dismembered, broken, and lacerated bodies while her steed violently scattered the remains with kicks.
The mercenaries couldn't believe what they were witnessing; their tamed creatures killed with such ease by this new enemy.
And Tristessa, with her trembling legs trying to prevent her from standing, was being forced to accept what she had wanted to deny and ignore.
"What kind of devilry is this?" Lufreya asked, without taking her eyes off the rider, who, in a cloud of darkness and Discord, made her steed disappear, leaving only her standing. "I've never seen a monster like this…"
"Don't let your guard down for a second," Reiden ordered, his stance firm and ready to both receive and strike.
The dark knightess took a step forward. Her cloak of shadows flapped majestically in the wind, her dark armor worthy of fear, as did her weapon, its blade dripping with fresh blood. And her head, held firmly in her left hand, a beacon of Discord that devoured all traces of light.
The Dullahan, Tristessa's Nemesis and daughter of the Angel of Rebirth and her Consort, had arrived and invaded the Derelict Outpost to claim her enemy's life.
"How can this be possible? What's she doing here, if she hasn't even been born yet? Why are you tormenting me?!"
In her mind, Tristessa was beyond overwhelmed by the terrifying chaos that had just arrived. She understood nothing, even though the warnings had been duly presented in the antechamber of her previous Death.
Her Nemesis had threatened to hunt her down to collect the debt for all the times she had used Dark Resurrection. And she had been so foolish, so naive, as to convince herself it had been an omen of the future –a still faraway future— she couldn't avoid.
The Dullahan's presence transcended reality, the cosmic canvas formed by time and space, and Tristessa was going to learn this the hard way, just as she had with all the misfortunes she had suffered since arriving on Nekrom.
"Come to me, promised enemy! Come to me, face me and defeat me!" The Dullahan's voice escaped from within her shadowy helmet; a voice regally sinister and worthy of nightmares, as expected from the daughter of angels. "Face the Darkness!"
Unlike Tristessa, the mercenaries didn't understand a word the dark knightess said: to them, it was a damaging noise that indiscriminately attacked their eardrums.
"Let me attack, boss!" Dom demanded, his teeth bared in rage as his ears bled, his flamberge ready to lash out at the Dullahan.
"On my mark... Now!"
With Reiden's indication, Lufreya fired bolts from her semi-automatic crossbow. Those were successful hits that did no damage against her armored chest, but the distraction had allowed Dom to rush the Dullahan.
"Gaaaa!" Dom raised his flamberge above his head and tried to land a downward blow on the invader's unprotected neck, from which thin tongues of darkness flowed, emanating from the absolute blackness that made up her body. "Die, she-devil!"
But the Dullahan countered the attack with her own sword. The sound of the impact between the two metal blades made Tristessa's teeth ache; she saw Reiden spring into action as Don recoiled from blocking her attack, taking his place and pointing the tip of his bastard sword at the Dullahan's arm holding her head.
A weak point? Reiden believed so, and swung vertically, hoping to strike both her gauntlet, reinforced with small dark stell plates, and her full-helm, in an effort to force her to open her hand.
"Ugh!"
Reiden grunted, in disbelief, as the invader not only dodged his attack by spinning one-hundred and eighty degrees on her own axis, but also lashed out, elbowing him in the ribs, where his frontal armor offered no protection. The blow was so strong that the man gasped and fell to his knees.
"Boss!" Lufreya fired her crossbow again, already reloaded with another drum of ammunition. "Get away from him!"
The Dullahan took several hits and blocked the last two with her sword. Just as Dom attacked again, the ghostly knightess disappeared in a burst of shadows, rematerializing right behind Lufreya.
"LU, NOOO!"
The two men screamed, but Lufreya never had a chance to react in time. The blade of the Dullahan's curved sword pierced her chest, tearing everything in its path and piercing the metal front plate like paper.
"It can't be... No, no, this can't be happening," Tristessa moaned, both hands on her head as she watched the mercenary spit blood.
The Dullahan raised her body, still pierced by her sword, and threw it in the direction of Madame Luchie and the mercenaries protecting her.
"Lu...! Damned monster!" Melian screamed, her companion's corpse practically at her feet, her blood flowing rapidly across the floor. "Firan!"
Melian pointed his wand at the Dullahan, and a fire elemental glyph appeared midway between them, shining like a star in the darkness that was gaining ground on the dying bonfire.
"What's she doing...?" the girl muttered as she saw the Dullahan point her head at the glyph. Again, a bad feeling she couldn't ignore.
The invader's actions allowed Reiden to attack her unprotected side: she cushioned the impact of his bastard sword, but not the speed of the parrying dagger the mercenary used to pierce her armpit. A guttural, feminine roar let them know the Dullahan had taken damage, but her head stopped pointing at the fire glyph; her eyes hidden in the shadows that abounded both inside and outside her full-helm.
The shadows emitted a violet glow. An unknown thaumaturgy spell caused Melian's glyph, a second before collapsing into a ball of fire, to transmigrate and appear behind the Dullahan, right between her and the rampant Dom.
"NO!"
Melian despaired as his own attack struck his companion, the impact throwing him backward and turning his frontal armor into molten metal. On the ground, Dom writhed as the stifling heat tore through the metal, burning his clothes, skin, flesh…
"It's my turn!" Bran shouted, breaking the barrier that kept Madame Luchie safe and joining the fight with his boss. "Fuaaaaa!"
The blond mercenary's war cry caused the Dullahan to kick Reiden away and distance herself, turning into shadows. Thanks to this, once back on the material plane, the phantom knightess was able to dodge Bran's violent axe blow, which shook the ground as it hit and sent debris flying into the air.
"Die! Dieeee!" Bran was a true berserker, his fury uncontrolled and attacking without regard for his surroundings. This prevented Reiden from assisting him in the attack, so he decided to go to Dom to check his condition. "Fight, bitch! Stop dodging me!"
But the Dullahan was impervious to provocation; a warrior born of the angels who served Vel'Moran would never fall for such a mundane strategy.
She saw the mercenaries as obstacles, her attention always fixed on her true objective.
"Defeat me, my enemy!" the Dullahan bellowed, before taking advantage of another missed blow from Bran to slam the back of her sword into his face. "Come at me!"
"Gah!"
Bran took a step back, losing his balance, his face filling with fresh blood that trickled from the open wound. The Dullahan aimed her head at his head and let out a shriek that, if for those far away it felt like hearing metal twisting inside their heads, for Bran it was deadly: the mercenary's eyes flooded with blood, and he stumbled, knocked out by the unbearable noise.
With a swift horizontal slash, the mercenary's head was severed from his body… And everyone, without exception, fell even deeper into despair.