The Grand Catastrophe

…

Hilma sat up in her bed. The sky was dark. The manor was cold. It was a bit of a strange night. Yet, that didn’t really register to right now, as she was rather thirsty.

She got off of her bed, and moved to grab the pitcher of water at the end of her room. Yet, something did feel off. Something wasn’t truly right with the darkness.

At the outside wall of her room was a massive window. It was rather useful for many things, such as seeing the sunset and sunrise. Yet now, she couldn’t even feel the moonlight on her skin.

As she drank from the glass of water that she had just poured for herself, she glanced at the window. As she saw it, what was covering the moon, she stopped what she was doing. There it was, brambles and vines, leaves and thorns. They were covering the whole of her window, the whole of her manor.

She made her way out of her bedroom, fear filling her now. After all, there weren’t any vines or other such things covering her home before. Yet, as she walked out of her room, and began to walk down the steps, she saw him.

In the darkness, two eyes glowed. One green, the other one blue. He looked to be a dark elf boy, dressed up as a girl. One may mistake him for a girl, given how he stood and how he carried himself.

Yet, she had seen many boys dressed up and pranced around like this. Yet, she was still confused. How had a nobles plaything gotten into her home. She began to ask, yet she stopped herself. Fear clenched her heart once again, not that it had fully left her.

“Hello miss?” the young elf asked as he stood on the floor, bodies and blood littering the floor behind him, “are you the nice lady that controls this place?” he asked.

Before Hilma could even respond, the door to the left of the staircase opened. Out of the doorway came a woman, tall and dressed as a maid. Her hair was in a bun, her face covered with a blue mask that hid her features.

She wore a pair of metal gauntlets with spikes adorning them. Blood covered them. Blood covered the inside of the door to that room. Hilma could feel bile rising up her throat as she looked on, horrified.

“Lord Mare, I’m going to assume that is the leader that we are looking for. Given the fact that she matches the description of her we have,” the woman said, her tone even and plain, as if recounting the weather.

“Yeah!” the little boy made a noise of exclamation, and grabbed the staff in his hands that Hilma hadn’t spotted.

He then brought it down on her knees. Pain flared in her boy, in her leg. She fell to her knees. The boy, now called Mare, grabbed her by the hair and dragged her outside. Her body was assailed by pain all the while.

“Miss Hilma, we’re going to be late if we don’t get there in a hurry. Come on!” the boy said, pulling her outside.

She screamed some more. The other woman simply walked behind the two of them. It seemed like she didn’t have a care in the world. Hilma very much wanted them to listen, listen to her voice, to her begging and screaming.

“Please stop Miss,” Mare spoke up as they reached the outside, “If you keep screaming, then I’ll have to make you stop,” he said, and she stopped, fear gripping her mind suddenly at that thought.

…

As Mare stepped through the gate with the woman in tow, Yuri Alpha looked on, slightly concerned about the mental stability of the woman in question. After all, Mare had broken her legs and probably damaged her further by dragging her out here.

She shook her head. Now wasn’t the time to think about such things. She had more work to do. Not much work, but work all the same.

Yet, as she turned around to way back into the manor, she heard someone say something to her. Now, she was rather high level, at least when compared to the people of this world. She was rather shocked internally that this woman could do so.

She turned to glare at the woman in question. Yet, as she locked gazes with her, she could tell that the woman was partially shocked. After all, she was covered in gore, her maid’s uniform was slightly smudged.

Not that she cared, any maid would get dirty when they had to clean up such filth. Though, what peeved her was the way that the rather large adventurer was looking at her.

“Hey, is that blood covering your gauntlets?” she said, her tone and voice reminding her of the differing people that she had to watch out for, “how’d you get that?” she asked with a bit of a smirk.

“By cleaning up this manor,” Yuri replied, “as a maid, it is my duty to clean up the house. I am rather busy, can we just part ways? I have to be somewhere,” she asked politely.

“No can do,” the woman who could be none other than Gagaran, “someone as suspicious as you, I’ll have to take in,” she said, while reaching for her hammer on her back.

Yuri sighed internally. Was this what it was like for her Goddess to deal with them all the time? After all, she was infinitely smarter than her. She took her mind off of that then. Now was the time for combat.

Yuri Alpha took a stance, her mind centered then. The other woman smiled, shifting the hammer in her hands. She charged forth, her hammer pulling up for a heavy. Yuri took a step to the side and delt a blow to the right of her torso.

Gagaran absorbed the blow, but winced with a heavy handed hiss and took a step back. Yuri didn’t let up, she punched forth with her right fist, looking to knock the other woman out. Gagaran brought her hammer up to block the blow.

She was pushed back. Her stance nearly shattered then, her face etching with a bit of pain. Yuri didn’t let any emotion show in her body, she simply took another stance, and then ran forward. The battle had yet to end, after all.

Gagaran smiled at this, her pain going away as if it were never there. She swiped with her hammer, activating a Marsal art as she did so. Yuri Alpha kept firing off blow after blow.

The other woman blocking each and every blow. Yet, she still couldn’t help but be pushed back slightly. Yuri Alpha kept it up. Sooner than later, the beast of a woman was sent rolling back. Her hammer slamming into the floor to catch herself.

“Alright!” she shouted, “Let’s fucking go!”

Yuri Alpha simply assumed another stance, her palms open to welcome her foe. Gagaran scoffed at this, and rushed forth. It was going to be a long fight, wasn’t it?

…