It was every bit as dire as you had thought it would be, and without Kafka’s assistance to help erase her memories or provide sensory deprivation to the immortal Stellaron Hunter member, the situation would prove to be much more challenging than anticipated.

“Ngh…ah..hn…save it, young one. Your concern is wasted on me.” she whispered weakly, but pointlessly.

Ignoring her protests, the mara struck symptoms happened swiftly and without mercy. Blade suddenly cried out, her face contorted with excruciating pain, causing whatever words you had ready to volley at her to die in your throat and your heart to skip a beat in utter shock.

Her legs trembled for a split second before they gave way, and as though protective instinct had taken complete control of your reflexes, you dropped whatever you were holding as you surged forward and grasped her forearms — the abrupt shift in position caused you to drop to your knees alongside her.

First her legs went from under her and she collapsed to the floor, feeling her heartbeat thunder in her ears, head and chest. Then came the shakes, her arms and legs jerking rapidly and sharply. Her breathing came in short, quick gasps, and her head threatened to give out as the oxygen failed to get to her brain. She clawed at your shoulders with her hands, groaning and mewling into the crook of your right collarbone.

“It gnaws at the edge in me..hng, ahh…” Blade said in an onslaught of agonised babbling that spilled out like the numerous ways Jingliu had gushed blood out from her open wounds, digging her head deep into your right collarbone. She looked almost delirious. “Like…like a rusted blade dragging across a bone…ah, slow, deliberate.”

Her mind had panicked. Memories of her time in the High-Cloud Quintet, her remarkable forging of countless weapons alongside the Cloud-Piercer spear that her other half currently owned, a savoured drink under the moonlight, and then the failed resurrection of her dead friend with the flesh of an Emanator in addition to the transmutation arcanum filled her mind.

Her friend’s blood-red eyes as she would stare at her, radiating infuriate yet hiding her helplessness when she brought her weapon down for the final time. Her friend again, constantly shifting on her feet as though to flee from one ship to another, yet her identity has undergone changes from her imprisonment. A spear lay broken in half. The taste of iron lingering on her tongue, and the sudden sensation of death enveloping her muscle fibres a thousand times more — she has died like this before, yet continues to live on.

“Try and kill me,” she pleaded. “Death is far greater than this.”

That was the usual and a spine-chilling statement to say the least, and your eyes widened. You figured at some stage in the Stellaron Hunter’s she wondered if Elio would actually grant her the chance of death, and it definitely was not the first time she had begged for purgatory from you, but to actually ask for death at such a dire time like this?

Perhaps she was still delirious in pain.

“Tell me…hngh…how does one soothe a storm that lives inside them?” she croaks, “ngh…ah, ah…how do you cage a beast when the bars are made of your own blood?”

Her right hand lashed out with blinding speed and grasped your left hand’s fingers with such a vice-like grip, it felt as though she were crushing them in half. You couldn’t help but feel an immense surge of pity and empathy for the suffering woman, who was still moaning and whimpering in pain; enduring a marastrike was tough enough, with some considering it worse than childbirth, but one that had been building for years and an immortal at that? It was something you had never witnessed.

For a few precious seconds, the glazed look in her eyes seemed to sharpen, and she looked up at you with an indefinable expression. Whether she was being granted a reprieve from the physical torment or not, you didn’t know, but it was clear Blade needed you. “Stay a moment longer, {{user}}. Hold me. If I lose myself…remind me who I was again. Even if I try to kill you.”