The Reborn Witch had a nice 'Tea Time' with the Dragon Queen today
Chapter 67: While the Cocoon Weeps

Chapter 67: While the Cocoon Weeps

"Selene? You good?"

"...no..."

On a street drifting of gargolytes’ dusts, a shared glance by Adrei and the witch, the former’s eyes blinking while the latter merely sighing in disappointment, as the young daughter of Adil the Elder gasped her burning lungs, curling up to the sword in fetal position Yasen would give a thumbs-up for, her face blushed black dusts for all the gargolytes she has killed, suffocating on the muddy blackness of the last stones yielded to her blade.

The fog barriers held, and the last of the gargolytes’ heads were casually flamed off by Adrei. The streets were muddled with tars from the dragon flames and glitters of frost, blackened by the corpse dusts of their enemies, yet the glowiness remained untainted as the street was set alit, a merciless and casual defiance against the gargolytes. Each gasp from Selene spouted hesitation of the inevitable confrontation between her meat shield and her mother, her worry for her mother’s safety and her semi-friend-not-friend’s betrayal souring her amateurish focus. Really, she would have rushed to the mansion and slapped both of them to stop fighting right now, but the throated bile of ashes she accidentally swallowed even denied even that strength.

Demond’s bare foot tapped a twitching stone head with a groan, as her raised finger sprinkled a small icicle to the ground to lotch into its stoney skull. Sighing as she glanced at Adrei, who smiled and pecked at her cheek, murmuring slight comforts for her grumbled protest, before the Dragon Queen turned as her voice boomed the streets with commands for the knights. Raise the debris for the child, tend to the wounded waist, and restructure frontline troops for injured instead of combats, orders given with a stern lightness that demands respect, as a rare admiration flared from the Witch’s icy eyes, as children clutching debris was lifted and a wounded knight spouted a brief thanks before returning to his duty.

The Witch gazed down the familiar white stone pavement, past the runed roads that pulsed of malice and vengance, to the gate five streets away from here. The gargoyles seemed to structure their attack away from the mansion, the more they get further from it, the more black masks wept and drummed the air. The witch’s tingly sense is numb, her connection with her bird she sent to the mission is nothing but coily gels and smells of irons, the bird chirp choking not of suffocation but of fears towards the unknown, and a tear of redness has soured the white canvas of the moonlight.

There is no time. La Llorona is awakening. The witch scowled as she turned to Adrei, who immediately swung her head to meet her gaze. "Adrei. Leave the relief work to me. I need a side activity to focus on while maintaining my barrier. You...go help Adil. Make sure she’s alright."

The slight stutter of worry belying her wife’s voice, as the Peacekeeper’s eyes glanced to the knight wavering, yet with a salute from a knight, a child’s cheering to reunite with her parents and a commander screaming orders in a distance, a relieved smile curled up on Adrei’s lips even if it tasted its own ashes after the forlorn battles. Adrei, however, didn’t smile as she nodded to the Witch, the authority of promise weighing between her brows and the glimmering icy eyes, before her legs dashed away with a thud on the ground, cracking the rune like a holy word meant nothing before the Queen.

Showoff. Her narrowed, exasperated eyes followed the scaled back before turning to Selene who was staggering her wobbly clumsy steps up to chase Adrei. Groaning, Demond’s own bare, steady steps forwarded before smacking the knees, as Selene fell again with a yelp on her bums.

"Hey what’s with you-"

"You have something else to do. Here."

Pocketing out a scroll, the witch threw it to Selene, who eyed it on as the familiar fabric fell on her chest, the one her mother’s office often used to draft runes and seals.

"<The Seal of Strengthening>. If La Llorona really will return, that very resurrection will shake the World and people will really, literally cry tears of blood. This seal works again when the runes activate as a source of energy, and...Adil told me you know what to do with it."

"...ha?" Selene scowled as she sat up and sculpted up the scroll, her eyes glossing over the circle drawn in intricate patterns while grumbling. "Mother of course didn’t tell me anything! She-"

Then, the familiar seal’s words froze Selene’s mind, the blood of the Druid called out to her as her skull jolted of all the knowledge she just received, before dampening the flow with a gasp.

"Wha-what...."

"Seems really like Adil intends solely for you to use it, even if I don’t trust the source of the Energy." The Witch growled, as she turned away. "Go now and do what you need to."

With that order, she walked away before weaving a flock of birds scattering around, all to find survivors if they are hidden within gaps of rubbles, so that the Knights may be known to the location. Selene narrowed her eyes to the scroll. Regrets for her meatshield, worry for her mother, and honour as a knight tackled in not a battle, but a tap dance of collesium in sync with her heartbeats. She took a deep breath as she stood before running to a familiar spot Adil once told her, the start of Rouen’s Town construction, the Street of Solitude Swordsmaiden.

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Hounds and vines clashed as the calm Druid and the shooked Vampire dashed towards one another. Veined roots meet frostbites as Manassah sunk in the trembling white silken claw, yet the dashing Druid swiped the barks as the root’s skins shed themselves anew to ripple new leaves and branches before lunging at the vampire. Manasseh gritted her teeth as she jumped side-way, her hounds slipping though cracks of vines as they lunged for her master’s protection, yet was blocked by layered rooted walls perfectly without a gap to slip through.

Damn it. The Druid’s approaching steps drummed her ears and heartbeats in one as her white silken claw arced in the air, iced silk splashed yet a massive wood pavement sprouted for the sky to block the frosts as Adil climbed. The vampire twitched as she arced more frosty silks, yet one neared the rising edges, the other to the side with the swifting growth of the Elder’s carpets. With enough distance closed, Adil jumped, leaves drifting alongside her, fighting with her, as arcs of frosted silks shot and flung away by the <Leaves’ barrier>.

Eyeing her hounds who has ran around the wall, the vampire pointed as her bretherens roared and lunged to the air for Adil. The Druid’s eyes narrowed before her palm swung, seeds thrown and bounced the hound’s head, before sprouting branches and seeping into the liquid, binding each and every particles as if the liquided black served well as soils. The vampire gasped, chortled in disbelief before she readied her claw, Adil with her lily’s staff stretched like a bow’s string at a hair’s breath.

Right silk claw meets the staff beyond the <Leaves’ Barrier> , as the vampire scoffed at the Druid not taking advantage of the roots to draw distance, only to stiffen as lilies’ petal from the tip flew from the staff and fell upon her cloaked arms, before pure, flowerly white coiled into intruding roots with flowers into blue veins, as blueness giggled again embracing its demise from the flowery sea.

The vampire contorted her expression as she cut off her right arm without hesistation before backing off, the Elder landing as Adil stared, Manasseh’s arm weaving itself anew, yet the shadowy cloak no longer draped over her right arm, her veined blues no longer chaining her to an existence she never wanted to be. A mercy from the Druid, a cruelty for the half-human Vampire.

Calm gazes from both swept over the battlefield, silence only pierced by the slight yelpings from the bound hounds who were seeping back into the soils. The wasteland now marred by frostbitten silks and lushing greens to barks, the sight of weavers for hatred, against the Druids for tranquil peace. One clung backwards, the other merely looked forward. One drown in redness of purpose, the other risen among the redness that shed its purpose.

La Llorona’s weeping sounded from the ball, as the vampire took a deep breath, glazing over the Druid. Beautiful, yet all so spiteful. If only...if only you realised earlier....none of this, none of this will have happened in the first place, none of her sacrifices would be needed to release her breatherns from beneath her feet.

"I will take your head, your town, your...your daughter, for your belated realisation for the defilements you commited against my kind, Adil."

The hooded houndmaster seethed, the shadowy cloak drifting along with the roaring gusts as the Druid watched, the wind merely carried the tension, but not the sentiment, as the Druid, the Elder, the Protector, closed her eyes, the solemness hidden behind her eyelids.

"Perhaps. I won’t judge you, for like my old friend once told me, if you claim so then it must be true. I was a defiler, and I remained sinned in my new vessal."

Yet rooted greens, grasses, leaves and flowers fielded around the Druid, the fleshness cradling the Druid as if in comfort. So for the first time, the tarred heart of the Elder, loosened, as her lips curled up to a solemn smile, before her final retort.

"Yet it is you who no longer has anything to lose, and I take solace I stand at the opposite end."

That brutal honesty...just like that greenhead Daughter of hers. The vampire clattered her teeth, each cuckle a biting remark of conflicts as she recalled her first ever, short-lived friendship after her transformation, before she lunged again for the mother’s head.

And so, the one who embraced corruption, and the one who rejected it, clashed an eternal sorrows for the loss of origin, against the rediscovery of it.