/PWR/#AA Unrealistic Dream
Executive Summary: Morganna is defeated by Lord Argyle. Just as she is about to be taken prisoner, she is unexpectedly rescued and she escapes through time to defy fate.
The year is O.E 792.
When the blast of dark magick receded, less than half of Satella Starlight's head remained. There is zero doubt, zero question, and zero defect about the statement: Satella Starlight is dead. No human would survive having half their face blown off like that!
Even without half her head, her blood-blonde hair still retained its rebellious streak!
Even in her final moments, she still remained frozen in a ferocious pose: a shotgun only a half-inch from pulling a fatal trigger; her other hand holding a pistol to what is left of her temple.
Even in death, a testament to her willingness to enact vengeance!
However, dead women do not shoot.
The target of her aggression simply moved past her in hooded black robe, the slight passing breeze collapsing the once-formidable figure, both her guns clattering onto the clocktower floor.
"Worthless thing. A wild lioness is only valuable when alive." The hooded figure does not pay the corpse any mind, instead turning sights to the real prize chained and kneeling on the clocktower floor.
Chains glowing a sickle-red emerge out of yellow paper talismans [1] spread her arms and force her into a low and bowing kneel on the floor. The diamond-like chains bite deeply into her lightly tanned skin as it leaves burn marks against her skin. She chafes with gritted teeth, unable to lift her head due to the collar-like chains pulling her head down on the ground.
Satella's death, did not hurt.
It did not hurt at all.
Once again, Morganna had to be the rational one.
The one to handle the clean-up.
The stinging in her eyes and mind burned.
That was all.
The plan had failed.
The force Satella and her worked to so hard to usurp...
It broke and evaporated in an instant.
Like broken bamboo... [6]
All because of one man.
That one person who evaded all her calculations...!
"When you usurped my brother's Afterlife Cult, you also removed my greatest threat." Now coming close to Morganna Fayde's face, the sharp-toed boots tapped lightly against the captive beauty's cheek to mock her. "Did you ever think that my brother's failsafe, was actually his greatest enemy?"
It was a most absurd thing. When Morganna and Satella took control of the massive mummified army from the Lord of Bones, they made sure to sever and cut out the Sunset Family from regaining control of their mummified masses on Bylon Island.
But they couldn't defend against someone who was cut out from the family in the first place...!
Because of this fatal error, Satella now lies dead.
Trembling eyelids drip rain, and a single glowing red eye narrows beneath hooded man's shroud!
"Is that regret? From someone who killed so many?"
"Just thinking..."
"Of...? I am right here, you know."
"How best to put a needle in your head, Lord Argyle."
[Thud!]
The sound of a boot kicking Morganna's face echoes through the clocktower room. The dark beauty sucks in trembling air through now-missing teeth, eyelids drooping slightly from the impact! The kick threw her head back along with her long light brown hair, only to see it shackled back into a kowtow by a chain-collar pulling downwards!
"Defiant to the last."
"I'm... I'm done, its my loss..." Between her fading thoughts, she still manages to squeeze out a last word between her gasps,
"...but I won't be paraded."
[Thud!]
A second boot strike stomps her formerly beautiful face into the stone curb, and Morganna finally falls silent with heavy breathing.
"Do you think that's up to you to decide?
What an unrealistic dream you have!
Your little play at being revolutionaries... is over!
You aren't just going to be abused and humiliated after this!!
I'm going to wrench every little bit of use out of you, starting with..."
Lord Argyle looks up to the giant and shimmering clock-face behind them. The entire back wall of the room is made out of the opaque glass that makes up the inside of Bylon Clocktower. It distorts every so often, the numerals on this Olden-style [7] clock-face swapping to unknowable symbols of daemonic origins. Its separated hands spin uncontrollably and off-center, no longer telling the right time nor place!
"…your mennifest, [The Threads That Pull Against Fate] [5]!"
Morganna stays silent.
She had never revealed how her mennifest worked to anyone. To outsiders, it was a simple and base mennifest; cutting strings that protruded from her fingers. A simple low-Mastery trick easily replicated by automata. The 'reality-bending' nature of her mennifest was something she kept a complete secret, if Argyle knew, that can only mean... the information leaked somehow!
It had been a mistake to come up to the clocktower after all. When the Afterlife Host collapsed, she fought a desperate retreat aside Satella and cornered herself in Bylon Clocktower...!
There was an old rhyme she remembered from days long past; that the Bylon Clocktower could turn back lost time and diverged fates! There was something beyond that shimmering interior clock-face, every magickal thread in her body told her so!
But the moment she activated the clocktower, this happened.
Had her thoughts been seen through?
She never thought that the Controllists, her enemies, believed that old rhyme for real!
She only needed one chance!
She had hoped that taunting her aggressor enough would loosen the chains somewhat, but no luck!
A single chance, a slight disturbance, and she would give an arm, both her arms, to hurl herself into the unknown light behind her now! Anything, anything at all was better than this!
"Your mennifest, toys with 'fate'." The single red eye under the hood drips blood-like tears onto the ground as it slightly narrows into a smirth.
"Is that what's beyond there, a different fate? A different world?"
Morganna sucks in the dusty air on the clocktower floor, but doesn't give a response.
"I see. There will be plenty of time to bring you back here, after you are properly tamed."
Lord Argyle pulls his boot up high in the air, the bottom of the skin-made boot giving off a nasty and vicious magickal aura...!
[THUD!]
The boot connects!
However...!
Not with Morganna's head!
Dark purplish magick collides with the tipped end of a single blocking blade!
"Who?!"
Out of nowhere, a red-robed figure brandishes its blade, making an impossible block with the mere tip end of the thin, narrow, ruler-like blade. Try as Lord Argyle might, the full strength of his boot didn't even budge the weakest point of this interceptor's blade!
"What, are you waiting for?"
Morganna too, was not expecting that.
The next sentence, jolted her back to her senses.
"Go, and bring the real deal next time."
Morganna took the hint.
She didn't care who this was. Or what dark god sent this interception, not even why!!! Fate works in mysterious ways, and despite being bloodied, bruised and missing half her teeth, she made...
... a single rational decision!
Two dark blue threads wrap a pair of thin circles around the inside of her shoulder.
With zero hesitation!
With zero regret!
A single, sick cutting motion!
Morganna Fayde split off both her arms, clean at the socket!
Unlike her pretend gasps of pain before, she didn't even wince or groan at this gruesome act!
Even as her left arm flew through the air, the last vestige of a magickal command cut a single thin blue thread across the chain-collar binding her neck to the ground!
[Fwip!]
Pushing off with the final burst of energy from her long legs, she fell backwards with her signature mirthful laugh; falling backwards through the portal...
She was free!
Defeated, battered, and without hope...
But she is free!
Even if she was the last surviving person, and there is no path forward...
Her vendetta will not be stopped...!
GLOSSARY
mennifest [5] - The 'action' of using magick to 'pull from another world'. Most magick users only have one unique mennifest.
[The Threads That Pull Against Fate] [6] - Lord Argyle calls Morganna's mennifest here 【逆缘蔑果红绳】, which roughly translates into 'The Red Strings That Pull Against Fortune And Break Karma'. The translation here is a romanticized reading
broken bamboo [7] - The specific term used here is 【破竹】, which means to be defeated so easily it is like breaking bamboo.
Olden-style [8] - Refers to the immediate time period before the founding of Vespana, whose story you are reading right now!
Dated 250122
