Liron's vision blurred, and he held a trembling hand to his lips. He leaned against the wall next to him. All the tension of the last days, wondering about his sister's fate, poured out of him as he saw her. She wore a highborn dress, similar to the one Gabriella had when they met for the first time. But Emma was given cold silver and blue tones. The color of Nordland.
"Em… Emma?" he asked.
Emma looked up, her face melting in tears. "Liri… you came…"
Neither managed another word, their emotions ruling supreme. Liron clawed at his chest. His reunion with his sister had to wait. "Assassin, show yourself!" he called, taking a step forward. Liron noticed no faint snapping of countless invisible strings. The assassin had used all the time available to her to create their battleground, filling it with obvious traps.
"I should ask for your name," Liron continued, "so I know whose grave I will piss on. But I wouldn't be surprised if you don't have a name. 'Cause you…"
A humming spread through the area. So weak and fragile, sung by a voice that had nothing left. It was simple, meant for a child. A lullaby.
She hung above them in a corner, hidden by the shadows. As with Emma, the assassin stuck in a spiderweb, hugging her legs. Angin had gotten her good. Half her face was covered in burn marks, her long hair hanging around her face. Her baggy clothes were torn, showing the bloody wounds underneath. The fight had left her in a sorry state, but her eyes made Liron pause. He had never seen such empty things. Hollowed out. Sinners had more life in them. A specter haunted her, born from whatever cruel life she had lived. Any joy or hope were crushed by the weight of things better left unsaid. And this ghost lurked out of her downward gaze.
"Trisa," the assassin said. "My name is Trisa,"
Liron's big mouth was his oldest and truest friend. But even he didn't know what to say.
"I'm sorry," Trisa said, not looking up. "I'm sorry, Emma. And you, girl. None of this is your fault. You were just at the wrong place at the wrong time. You believed in the wrong things and trusted the wrong words. Foolish, as I once was. But you don't deserve to die for this. Or to suffer."
Trisa raised her head. Her expression darkened, the hollowness burning away to something else. Something thirsting for blood. "You, on the other hand, do," she said, looking at Liron. "The only good thing that has happened to me in years, and you took it from me. Amor was the one person who understood me. The one I felt at peace with, and I never got to tell him that. He was a good man. He deserved better. But no, he had to die by your hands."
As Trisa spoke, she stopped several times, mumbling to herself. Her gaze shifted, becoming distant and erratic. Liron narrowed his eyes, recognizing a nasty wound on her head, hidden underneath her hair, painting the strands red. Whims tugged her mind into different directions, her attention scampering between them.
But one proved itself superior, outweighing all others. It spread, conquering her entire being until it claimed Trisa for itself. Her eyes oozed with something hateful. A bitterness grown over decades. Like a scar infected with a rot, festering with death. It had opened up, unleashing the taint that the assassin had carried with her for years.
She looked at Liron and Gabriella, making no difference between the two anymore. "Mira," Trisa said, her voice deteriorating like a decomposing corpse. "It was you, after all. Of course. I should have known. Is this another one of your tests? Have you not taken enough already?! How much more do I need to sacrifice before you will be satisfied?! How long until I'm perfect enough for you?"
"I was ready to become your weapon. I would have eradicated entire families. I would have tortured children if you had asked me. All I would have wanted in return was Amor and some semblance of a normal life. You spiteful bitch couldn't even give me that! No more! I spit on the name Fran! I spit on you! If I had known what you would do to me, I would have stayed a beggar! You ruined my life! You ruined everything! I will kill you! I will fucking kill you, you cursed bitch! You have taken too much from me! I will endure no more! And once I rip your heart from your chest, I will kill the entire clan! Everything you've built, I will take from you! No one will remember you! You will only be known as Sinra Urach's useless little sister!"
Trisa panted, tears flowing down her cheek. She smiled, playing with the surrounding webs, ice forming around her fingers. "Fuck, I never felt better. Mira, you have to die. I will have my justice. For what you've done to me… and," Trisa quivered, the next words bleeding her heart dry. "And… and my poor Amor. You will die."
Liron tensed up. This fight promised to be a somber business. Another one to regret. In moments such as these, Liron wondered what to say. Trisa was not the monster he wanted her to be. If only she could be Kasper or Adenius. Someone worthy of being hated. Why did he need to fight her? Emma had said that the greatest of songs was trapped in her lute, and she had to find it. Buried under all the words he knew, there were the right ones to say. Words that would reach Trisa's tortured soul and quench her torment for a moment. Words that would end this clash before it even began. The dreams had shown Liron that his life could follow different paths. Were there other versions of him? How many Lirons stood in the exact spot he was, hearing Trisa's cries? Hopefully, one of them found the right words to say.
Liron didn't.
As soon as Liron had entered the floor and as Trisa had lost herself in her rage, he had built up smoke. He kept them dense, amassing into a cloud hidden underneath his clothing. With the assassin visible, he let them float behind him. After his many clashes, he couldn't evoke a flood of smoke. But what he needed wasn't a surge to drown Kupferrang. Following Gabriella's request, he had focused on manipulating the smoke's inner structure, taking advantage of Trisa's speech.
The assassin leaned forward, ice crackling around her. Liron cleared his throat, giving Gabriella the signal. Embers plunged into the smoke behind them, igniting into a blinding flash. He had witnessed Angin's light bombs enough times to model his explosion after them. His spell didn't match his master's bombs, brief and mild in comparison. But Trisa and Emma cried out, their eyes overstimulated by the flash Liron had unleashed. Neither Liron nor Gabriella suffered their fate. But blinding the assassin was never their goal. In the second the floor lit up, their shadows stretched forward like they stood tall as giants.
Any Wizard that reached the level of an Initiate could summon their Conduit from the element or property linked to their Gate. Amor had done this with his torches in his battle against Liron and Angin. Gabriella was an Apprentice for only four days and would never reach the same level if she kept changing her Conduit.
As her shadow reached Trisa, Gabriella grinned, summoning the wolf from underneath. The assassin pressed her eyes together, unable to see. But she had trained her entire life for nothing but murder and combat. This Mira had ravaged her mind but had imposed instincts rivaling Drom's most savage children.
Ice pillars erupted from her spiderweb, catapulting her high, escaping the wolf's immediate reach. She held her hand high, strings of webs snatching at them from all around. She wielded them like blades, sharper than any steel, slashing at the wolf. Madness had to rule Gabriella's mind, but Liron had to admit her to be gifted.
Gabriella hadn't summoned her Conduit in full. Only her wolf's head manifested. The beast's body would have caused the floor to collapse. The constant flow of battle and threat of death had given her what she wanted. An Apprentice of only four days, but she had garnered an intuitive understanding of manipulating her Conduit that Liron lacked.
The strings rushed towards their target, but before they could claim the kill, the wolf's form changed. Gabriella's Conduit manifested itself through her shadow. Spells were the result of the interplay of Conduit and Gate. What would happen if someone pushed what the property of their Gate should be capable of?
Gabriella distorted her wolf, taking away its solid shape. It devolved into a formless mass carrying the features of the beast, like its fangs and eyes. A horrid sight, one born from Gabriella's missing experience. But she had proven herself a quick learner.
The strings cut into her Conduit, slicing it into five. But the mass expanded forward, restructuring around the spell. Gabriella had taken a good look at Zonis, copying how he moved. Her wolf restructured itself, becoming a hand bearing fangs. Each finger a piece of the former maw, the beast's eternal hunger engraved into them.
Trisa's eyesight had yet to recover. She knew her spell had failed to eliminate the threat. She crossed her arms in front of her, the strings on her hands reaching out to the webs surrounding her. Ice pillars rose from them, hurrying to her defense. The misshapen hand snapped shut into a fist, plunging into Trisa's defenses. Despite being injured and blinded, the assassin was a Mage, and her spell couldn't be shattered by an Apprentice with ease. Trisa used her strings to pull herself backwards, escaping the deadly grasp before her pillars gave in, crushed.
Gabriella kept the assassin occupied. Liron could have joined her. Perhaps this would have been the right move. But reason be damned. He was human, at the end of the day, and he had waited long enough. Smoke swallowed his boots whole, and one ember turned them into force.
He bolted forward, slamming into his sister. Spikes of winter came alive, the spider web a trap he had activated. Expecting this, Liron had engulfed himself in embers, hot enough to block the spell. It wouldn't have stopped it, but Liron's momentum aided it, tearing through the spider web.
Liron and Emma rolled over the ground. The fight beside them and the massacre below them faded. They both wept as they clung to one another, clawing into each other's hair. Liron buried his face into her shoulder, taking her in. He had thought her lost. He had given up all hope. Fate had taken his parents from him. Why stop with them? A fitting cruelty to rip the last he had from his family.
Yet she lived, breathed, and cried. He held no illusion or desperate plea given form. It was Emma. She lived. And he had finally freed her.
Liron could have shed tears for days, trying and failing to tell his sister what she meant to him. In a good world, he would have.
Trisa's eyes returned their service to her. She dashed around, using her strings to move around, avoiding all attacks. Gabriella's Conduit ever changed and evolved, hunting after the assassin. Liron took Emma by her arm, helping her up. They run towards Gabriella, keeping low as the bout raged on, fragments of the clash showering them.
Trisa outmaneuvered the mass, swinging herself above her foe as its four tentacles stomped down, the five eyes struggling to keep up with her. She held her hands in front of her face, a spiderweb woven between her fingers. Dozens of strings building up a cold end for the Conduit. She pressed her feet against a thicker string attached to the ceiling, building up strength. Like a bow, she shot forward, an arrow bringing death.
The icy death sprung forward as Trisa opened her arms wide. The spiderweb turned into a thrown net, a trap woven into it. All caught inside it would experience a frozen tomb. But it hit nothing, as Gabriella dismissed her Conduit at the last moment, letting Trisa's spell go nowhere. The net bit into the ground, ice spears erupting from it. They impaled nothing, the air around them freezing.
No training could arm one against a creative mind. Trisa had expected the mass to slither around, growing into another nightmare to counter the spell. The dismissal threw her off balance, presenting Liron, Gabriella, and Emma with the window they needed. The mad girl's eyes flashed with a primal thirst. Only the assassin's death could clench it. But their commands were clear. No heroes. They had to survive.
As Trisa changed her trajectory with her webs, readjusting, Liron, Gabriella, and Emma ran away. They hurried down the stairs, hearing the assassin curse as she noticed her mistake.
"Liri," Emma said, "who is this Amor?"
Liron frowned. "Em, please, can we…"
"Just tell me!"
Liron grunted, struggling to breathe as they raced down the stairwell. "He was an assassin. Nearly got me, but Angin and I killed him. The assassin was close with him, I guess…"
"What did he look like? What did his voice sound like?"
"For what do you…" Liron said, glancing at his sister. As he saw her expression, the tension in it, he understood. Emma was always smarter than was good for her. She had seen the Empire's flaws before Liron. Her constant drive to rebel had sharpened her senses. If there was the scent of blood in the air, dripping out from a wound or weakness, she would sniff it out.
Liron grinned. "Ah, I get it. You should have just told me."