The Reborn Witch had a nice 'Tea Time' with the Dragon Queen today
Chapter 56: History’s Futility, Madness’s Silent End

Chapter 56: History’s Futility, Madness’s Silent End

A Few Minutes Ago

Gold streaked past Selene, a blink, a frown then a scoff as she registered the dreamlike sequence.

"....bridal carry, huh. How nice."

Her hatred must have concocted the worst malice in her romance brain, she remarked, as she saw zero possibilities for that (formerly) grumpy old man to be carried like a blushing bribe, let alone panting in such a vulgar desperation....ugh, is that really the uncle she knew? Selene mused as her leather shoes with metal tips clinked with each step of the white stone, the silver sword at her waist bouncing as if ready to hopping a journey for justice, as a metal necklace secretly tugged beneath her silken shirt, her mind scanning her memory of the location she asked from the local before arriving at an unfamiliar coffee shop.

Haha, ’Cherry’s Bliss’. Secretly ridiculing the name that would have had the owner inside fuming, she took a step forward inside, eyes darting before landing upon the familiar, red ’meatshield’, nibbling away at a cookie.

She gulped, her cheekbone reddened not in embarrassment but from the spelled vampires’ slaps last night, as her hasty steps were dragged forward, her eyes searching any sign of hostility even when her palm was already drawn to the hilt of her sword, before Manasseh’s friendly declaration echoed in her ear.

"Oh...you arrived."

A declaration, yet the lack of teasing lightness made Selene frown, as she strolled more confidently at the weakness, ever more bold to ’recruit’ Manasseh as her ’teamate’. The vampire’s vacant eyes stilled not on her, but on the runed grounds beneath her steps.

"Of course, a knight never sullied a deal!"

"With a vampire?"

"....don’t be stingy."

Selene gasped as she plumped onto the seat before an elf with straightened shoulders strode and delivered two tea plates. Thanking the owner with her signature uncanny smile, Selene darted her glance away to the window for the streets of Rouen, ever filled with people’s chatters and laughters, unlike the red-haired meatshield that would help tank one or two hits from Demond for her.

"Stingy, is it?" Manasseh curled around the porcelain with trembling hands as she sipped, the familiar, steaming hotness on her tongue aching once again against the vampire’s coldness. "Your mother proves to be more stingy that I ever can be. Her hatred runs so deep she kept it all in for the past twenty years. See the runes of the town?"

"...yeah, I get that these...." A wry smile curved as the hollowed runes from the ground glittered against the sunlight. "Well, it’s not like I can’t see where you’re coming from. But given that no one expected the war to end within two years by Alice’s hand, a little paranoid won’t hurt against the demon here and there."

"But what if I told you those runes are carved from the ashes of my bretherens’ corpses?"

"Ah corpses. Crop...ses..." The syllable that contained wavering faith lingered, as Selene frowned against Miss Meatshield, their last night’s conversation about her distracted mother that merely left her daughter with her glowing runes, as well as the ’duel’ against Uncle Demond impaled a dreadful applause that drummed realisations into her head, as she narrowed her eyes to Manasseh. "Well, let’s....I don’t know. I can’t dismiss the fact either with how weird mother has been, I do know you still killed our knights, remember? We even gave you a choice to surrender."

"To Adil? Absolutely not, or else we would face a fate worse than death." Manasseh hissed as the curled finger tightened on the tea cup, her fang shimmering bloodlust.

"But what else could you have accomplished, Meat-uh, Lady Manasseh? Your people...all of them are dead." A solemn nod from the knight as if ashamed at the meat...ah, this is weird, the vampire’s families massacre. Her personal vendetta aside, she herself was partly responsible for allowing troubles afoot, a responsibility shared by all knights who failed the city by letting slip an enemy. If they knew earlier...if only they had an entire grasp on the situation, perhaps it may not have to come to this.

"Don’t spill your pity over me...knight." Manassah frowned, her tone dampened under the brutal honesty that crashed a wave at her resolve, the grip loosening on the teacup. "Our people’s vengance ran back in milleniums. A mere century by your druid’s clan cannot hope to outmatch our years."

"So...what, though? My parent was also killed by you vampires, and I live just fine with mangas and swords." The knight’s violet gaze burrowed into the vampire’s hesitation. "I sympathise with your people’s slaughter, I really do, but frankly....you all just can’t help but to fail harder and harder, can you?"

"..." Manasseh glazed over the hollowed runes, no longer pulsing with whispers for the vilest punishment to be descened upon Adil, but merely a silent hollow husk just as her aimless hatred seeded her lost purpose. The vampire cast one final glance at the tea, the eyes that bloomed rosery red now fumed entirely by the mana of the hero who had massacred her entire clan, the blueness forever taunting her to gorge out her own eyes, except silks fuelled by that same mana would regenerate even that.

A truly tortureous fate, can’t die because of Alice’s mana, yet wants to die because of Alice’s mana. Her body never felt like her own for a decision she made in assumption Lady Adil would never let go of her grudge, for the duty of releasing her own people for their dignity, yet the world played a cruel joke on her from inside out, turning over her existence and ripping it to shreds. She struggled even against that, struggled when she heard her clan’s final, silent moments in the blizzard bombardments from the survivors, yet the ragged edges cannot be put back together, her eyelids forever stitched open to watch her people’s ghostly remains at her feet.

"...yeah, I learn that no matter how I seem to try, it is you humans who towered over us at the end."

A complete, utter defeat now washed over Manasseh’s mind, the relief of letting go of her hatred came with exhaustion, not with privilleges, just as the old Druid Elder realised back then, it is poetic, almost, how through the ultimate sins of weakness and cowardice against the Druid’s clan, clampered down on the very last vampire. Had the old, corrupted Adil known deactivating the runes would yield such a result, she would turn her back in a smiliarly abyssal victory and let Manasseh live in suffering, knowing all the sacrifices she made to deactivate the runes were merely spat upon like a gutted rosery petal.

"Ah, customers! You seem down so here, Rab Rab!"

Selene blinked at the Manasseh who seemed deep in thoughts. The figure resembled....ah right, Pessie! Pessie when her sungaze nodded down when the sun is not up! Urgh, poor Jessie...don’t worry, once this knightly mother guilt-tripped-, I mean recruited this vampire with love and mercy, Uncle Demond’s non-existence dong dong would be sorched just like your petals, Jessie!

Completely ignoring the automation’s weird froggy endeavours beside her, as she bowed her head. A bizarre twist of nostalgia and hesitation fuelled her. Technically...her opponent can’t be considered a human but rather a mere meatshield but....ugh, screw it. She knew not any sincere words or carrried any remorse over the vampire that literally tried to kill her last night, but disappointed at their own leadership? Yes...yes she can latch on to that a little, sorta.

Glancing upon the slumped shoulders like hers after another one of her mother’s scolding, Selene sighed. "I am...I wish things are different, yes. But here we are, at least...we share the same table, the same drink. We’re both still here, so...that’s a start?"

Manasseh’s defeated gaze met Selene’s sincerety, her clouded senses as a half-human blaring at the disgust of a warmth that dared to invade her vampiric blood, yet warmth is all she had at this point. Clans lost, families lost, duty lost.....there was now none she could or needed to accomplish.

"...you never even touch your drink." A chuckle, exasperated by herself and the naive girl in front of her, escaped her tired lungs that lived instead of pause. Selene widened her eyes as her palm quickly cupped the porcelain, frowning at her unlady/unknight behavior, before merely pouring all the liquids into her lips, ever eager to show her sincerety for a ’meatshield’ she wished to recruit.

"Ah-hot....hot....hot...."

"Dear Customer! Please drink slowly, have you got a cat tongue, meow?"

"Grr-ah, what’s with this weird elf girl, Manasseh? She has been annoying us non-stop even when you grief and all...what, you says there are cookies? Ah...can I have one?"

A loosened string cut for the Manasseh’s brows, perhaps in admiration, perhaps in wonders, perhaps in mere solace that someone in this world is willing take her lonely side. Manasseh watched Selene fanning her scorched lips, before slid her own cookie across the table. A white flag in sugar and crumbs, for her soul was tainted by a purposeless vengence, and the massacrer’s mana, yet even amidst the simple tranquility as Selene hastily apologised to the elf as her fingers curled up for the cookies, her lips curled up at the absurdity of the small greenhead’s bumbling antics.

Had she known Selene would have otherwise forgotten the meeting if not for 90% pettiness, 10% ’she just remembered’, and 100% personal grudge that made her weep like an infant she described, she’d have laughed. Instead, she merely took another cookie from the elf.

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