Chapter 645: An Elf’s Tale, Part 5
Blinding pain once more. An agony tenfold of what came before. She no longer even possessed the strength to express her agony, her lips gaping wide open in a voiceless scream.
Eshwlyn found her gaze lifted to the clear blue sky, feeling as if the very heavens were failing all around her. She felt her body weightless, numbed to every sensation but pain. It was unbearable, indescribable... she knew she couldn’t last... but yet like a distant echo in a dream, she heard Lenora’s cries intensify... and she tightened her grip on his.
The surface of her skin was blazing again, the same searing bright white, like tendrils of light spreading through and consuming her body whole. It was weighing her down tremendously, she could feel herself sinking to the ground as if every inch of her was suddenly cladded with the weight of the world.
Lenora screamed again, and she felt what feeble lift still stirred within her give a rousing lurch. She dropped her eyes forward, through blurring tears and immense light, Eshwlyn deafened herself to everything else and committed the entirety of herself, her focus, her intent, her fidelity, and surrendered it all, her hand tightening even more in his.
Wilvur’s scarlet eyes began to gleam with promise, his pale-white skin almost sparkling with the incandescence of the ring, and he began to form an exhilarated smile.
“Still not dead!” He exclaimed aloud almost maniacally, proclaiming to anyone within the vicinity that would hear him. “Do you see this?! Who here still retains any doubts to the truth you see before you now?! I ask you, what being, Elf or otherwise, could go through this kind of ordeal still yet persevere?! No one but her! It is only her! And in the next coming moments, she will finally be mine and mine alone!”
“Wilvur, it is not working!” Terra’s voice blared in a culminated panic. “You’ve already long past the allotted time for a successful Conversion! It’s stagnant! She’s just stagnating! You’ll kill her!”
.....
“I never once deluded myself into believing there would not be a struggle in this,” Wilvur said, whirling back towards the kneeling, ebbing Eshwlyn, and breaking into a derisive chuckle. “After all, great gain is not without its great adversities. And a great gain she is indeed! There is no denying it now!”
“Why don’t you just see to the fact of the matter that you’ve deliberately blinded yourself too?!” She shouted. “Eshwlyn is not loyal to you!”
“She will be!” He snapped, “She can be! The greatest of her kind- if so, then it is no trouble for her to do so! She can do anything! And if not... if she can’t pledge herself, even now,” He flexed his palm, protruding veins, and Lenora broke into even screechier shrieks. “Then what good is she then to me, really? Humanity?”
Eshwlyn buckled trying to stand, attempting again, her knees quivering greatly, failing again, but his words, her cries-resurging something within her, strength, determination, enduring her forward despite the continuous torture.
The green in her eyes was flooding with a flushing crimson, replacing the tears, streaming down her face in thickening droplets, and gradually the grass around her was being coated red with blood, pouring out of every orifice of her strained expression.
And she still did not yield her hold.
As the glowing white spread further than it ever had, as every muscle in her body began to twitch and spasm, she only strengthened her hold on him, her nails breaking and embedding into the skin of his palm.
She will be his.
She must be his.
The white was flaring brighter, stronger-now almost swallowing her body entirely.
Lenora had stopped screaming for a while now. She didn’t hear it, didn’t see it-he was the only one that mattered now. He has to be.
“Eshwlyn, no! Let go of him! Let go!” Someone screamed again.
Keep going.
“Yes, yes! You are so very close!” Wilvur cried out, her Master cried out. His joy, his pleasure, the only thing that will ever matter. “I knew you would prevail over all! Besting all odds, that is what your very existence embodies! You will show this to the world! You will be a legend among legends! The great among the greats! A warrior finally worthy of the mantle of Knight! You! You alone! Eshwlyn the Elf-!”
Suddenly it was all gone.
The light.
The pain.
The screams.
The words.
The world.
Wilvur had let go.
In a streak of blood hurling across the air.
Eshwlyn felt herself collapse backward in a lifeless heap of benumbed senses. As she fell, seeing the world in a blur, she caught a glimpse, a glint of bright silver in the swiftest of seconds, the sway of long crimson locks skirting across the grass.
“What is this?! What do you think you are doing?!” A deep, startled voice bellowed, and a hum of magic began to permeate the air, “Elf, stand down! I compel you to stand-!”
A thick pouring rain of blood suddenly then drenched her already bloodied face in warm pellets, and in a hard thud, she glimpsed the horror-filled expression of the Old Magus falling close to her side, the deep slice and blade still embedded in the front of his neck rapidly spurting out the life from his vacant eyes.
“Run! Everyone, just run!” Eshwlyn heard Terra’s voice resounding in the sudden silence. “You must go! Someone alert the King! Call the guards!”
And amidst her commands, from nearer, louder, she could hear the hoarse grunts of pain from someone familiar.
“T-Tilina...” Wilvur sputtered breathlessly, his voice in a tense quiet of fury. “What is the meaning of this? Y-You can’t... you aren’t allowed...”
Eshwlyn managed to veer her eyes right, and in the dimming black of her life, she saw Wilvur still standing tall in his usual imposing stature... and it buckled, faltered... as a spreading dark-red pigment overtook the blue of his robes, growing faster, as Tilina plunged her blade deeper into his guts.
“You stupid fucking Elf!” He spat out as he buckled again, and the crimson-haired Knight gently lowered him to his knees. “Do you have any idea what you’ve done?! What you’ve cost me?! You... you...!”
“I am everything you’ve ever asked for,” Tilina calmly said to him. “Everything you’ve ever strived for. What you are doing now, Master... it is a mistake. Replacing me is a mistake that would cost you greatly. Your greatest Knight, for your sake, Master, I cannot have you dispose of her.”
“You are not! You will never be!” He heaved, trying and failing to pry out the sword from her rigid grip. “Just why have you not realized this of yourself yet?! And now... now you have...!”
“Did what I did to keep you all solely to myself, Master,” She finished for him, then slowly, hesitantly, before breaking through her reluctance, she reached for him in comfort and tenderly stroked his long white mane. “As is what you have decided of me.”
“You have decided that yourself,” He wheezed out. “You and your delusions of love, of affections, you’ve convinced yourself that-is this what this is, then?! This is how your so-called love manifests itself?”
“No one else could have served you better than me, Master,” She said, audibly breathing in his scent. “And if not me, if I can’t provide you your sole best... then it is only a given that no one should as well... because I know that no one else could. I will not let you live that life of suffering.”
“You are mad.”
Tilina formed the smallest smile, leaning her head against his. “I am what you made me, Master.”
But he was no longer paying any attention, his scowl losing its intensity, the gleam in his eyes losing its focus.
“I was so close...” He slurred, and for the first time since, Wilvur turned, finding Eshwlyn in his sights. “So very close... achieving what nobody else has done... to be humanity’s savior, I only... I only just...”
But then Tilina usurped his focus back onto her, turning his head, realigning his eyes with her golden glow, and softly assured, “You already have, Master. With me.”
“You...” a pause, a silence, a final sliver of hatred leaving his lips. “You are... nothing. I... I deserve...”
Wilvur never finished, and he never will. Collapsing to the earth, the sword leaving his wound. To the skies, his final seconds of life bore witness to. And the only thing that left stirring of him was the cold winter wind billowing at his hair.
“You deserve only the best, yes...” Tilina said, smiling above his lifeless corpse, before lowering herself, a large bundle of her red hair shouting both their faces as she slowly leaned in closer to him... before parting away with a glimmer of bright red thickly coating her lips.
Then in one act of servitude and of affection, Tilina turned the tip of her blade onto herself. In one second, the rupture of armor erupted all around, the soft squelch of flesh skewered resounded, and in the next second, she had run herself through her sword.
And then in a final act of defiance, slowly, she turned her gaze towards Eshwlyn’s, the luster of life dimming from the gold in her eyes, as she spoke to her one last time, before she crumpled, before she died, together with her Master, closer in death than ever alive, with a satisfied smile the final imprint of her life.
Her final words echoing, affirming once more.
“And I am all eternally that he ever deserves.”
This 𝓬ontent is taken from f(r)eeweb(n)ovel.𝒄𝒐𝙢