บท 26: After the Mana Storm
Dabria tilted her head slightly, her crimson eyes glinting with curiosity as she watched Visha continue her meticulous work on the potion. The silence between them was comfortable, but Dabria's thoughts were far from idle. After a while, she couldn't contain her question any longer.
"So, what happened after?" she asked, her tone light but laced with genuine interest. "After you left the church's woods, I mean. I've always wondered how you became the renowned Pestilent Sovereign. Seems like a bit of a leap from laying in the mud, struck by lightning, to the woman standing before me."
Visha paused for a moment, her fingers stilling over the alchemical tools in her hand. She didn't look up immediately, her pale-green eyes fixed on the swirling liquid in the dish. Finally, she spoke, her tone measured and calm, as though recounting a story that didn't quite belong to her.
"I woke up in the woods hours later," she began. "The storm was gone, and the air was still thick with mana. My body felt… foreign. Strong, but wrong. Every nerve was alive, burning with energy that didn't feel natural. The wound on my side—the one from the lightning—was gone, replaced by skin that looked untouched. But I wasn't the same."
She glanced up at Dabria, her expression unreadable. "The System spoke to me for the first time. It told me what I was—a Wraithborne hybrid. It gave me my class, [Pestilent Harbinger], and told me the usual nonsense about leveling up and unlocking skills. I ignored it at first. All I cared about was understanding what had happened to me."
Visha leaned back slightly, her voice growing softer. "I wandered for days, testing the limits of my new abilities. My touch could decay anything—plants, animals, even stone. The poison in my blood had become a weapon, something I could control. But it wasn't just my body that had changed. My mind… it felt clearer, sharper, like I could see the world for what it really was. And what I saw was a world that didn't need me."
Dabria frowned slightly, folding her arms as she listened. "So, you were lost."
"Not lost," Visha corrected, her tone firm. "Uncertain. I had always been a weapon—something sharp and deadly, meant to be used by others. Without anyone to wield me, I didn't know what to do with myself. So I did what I always did. I hunted."
Dabria raised an eyebrow, intrigued. "Hunted what?"
Visha's lips curled into a faint, humorless smirk. "Anything that needed killing. At first, it was monsters. The mana storms had brought chaos, and there were plenty of creatures to deal with. But it didn't stop there. Word spread quickly about a woman who could rot entire forests with a touch, whose blood could melt steel. Mercenaries, assassins, bounty hunters—they all came looking for me, hoping to take me down or recruit me."
Her smirk faded, replaced by a calm, detached expression. "They all failed."
Dabria chuckled softly, her grin returning. "Of course they did."
"As I fought, I leveled up," Visha continued. "My abilities grew stronger. I unlocked skills that let me control the miasma, create plagues, and summon spectral familiars. The System named me the Pestilent Sovereign after I reached my first Class Ascension. Apparently, I had 'claimed dominion over death and decay.'" She rolled her eyes slightly, her tone dry. "Poetic nonsense."
Dabria laughed, her voice light. "Oh, but it suits you so well, darling."
Visha ignored her, her gaze distant. "Eventually, I stopped running and started building. I found an old mansion in the middle of nowhere and made it mine. I carved out a place for myself, somewhere I could work in peace. I learned alchemy, refined my abilities, and began experimenting with the poisons and plagues I could create. People started calling me the Pestilent Sovereign because of what I could do, but to me, it was just survival."
Dabria leaned closer, her expression softening slightly. "And is that all it still is? Survival?"
Visha's pale-green eyes met Dabria's, her gaze steady. "It's what I'm good at," she said simply. "And it's enough."
Dabria studied her for a moment, her crimson eyes glinting with something unreadable. Then she smiled, a slow, mischievous grin spreading across her face. "You're so stubborn, Wifey. But that's part of why I adore you."
Visha shook her head, a faint smirk tugging at her lips. "Adore me or not, we still have work to do."
Dabria laughed, leaning back against the tree. "Oh, darling, you know I'll follow you anywhere. Even into this goddess-forsaken labyrinth."
Visha returned her focus to the potion in front of her, her movements calm and precise. "Good," she said quietly.
Dabria's eyes narrowed thoughtfully as she gazed at Visha. Her grin soon faded slightly, replaced by a faint, bitter smile. Slowly, she leaned off the tree and strutted towards her. Sitting down, she rested her head on Visha's lap as her Wifey continued to make the potions for the Crimson Cubs.
Dabria watched the cold beauty's face as the Wraithborne worked. Her Vee was always beautiful, even as children, Dabria thought if a ice statue could have living form, then her Wifey would be a perfectly example. Her once golden eyes were replaced by two pools of liquid jades. Her pupils were slits, similar to her own at the moment. Her olive skin had a sickly green undertone to it, as if she was dying... or poisoned. Snow white hair reached down her back in thick, soft waves like liquid mercury.
Dabria reached out and brought a strand of silver hair to her nose. It smelled like cold snow in winter and nightshades when they first bloom. The scents strangely complemented each other and undoubtedly matched her beloved.
Hehe, Wifey's scent is so nice~
Dabria was so engrossed in her eh... admiration that she didn't notice a pair of pale green eyes staring down at her, completely dull of emotion.
Seeing the dark-haired beauty's bizarre actions, Visha couldn't help but think back to her childhood days as an experimental lab rat, when Dee would do similar odd things out of the blue every now and then. There was this one-time Visha woke up to Dee drooling with an odd look on her face as she watched Vee sleep.
Dabria was always possessively clingy, even back then. Any time either E or B tried to play with her or show her any affection, Dee would get needy and sometimes even threaten E and B. To the most well-cultured, they would instantly recognize Dabria as a yandere.
Blinking her memories of those times away, Visha reached out and flicked the now-drooling, dark-haired beauty on the forehead.
Ignoring the pout on her face, Visha asked something she had been wondering since she woke up. "When will your eyes return to their natural state? I am assuming this blood color is simply a side effect of sorts?"
Still pouting while she gently rubbed her forehead, Dabria nodded, "It should return when I have gotten my emotions in check. I'm still really angry about you getting hurt. My powers tend to leak out in specific ways when I am too emotionally unstable." Then she paused nervously while biting her lip. "Do...do you not like them?" she murmured.
Visha sighed heavily and grabbed her childhood sweetheart into an embrace. "...Silly," she answered into a tangle of dark hair. Dabria's hair smelled like ash and dark things. It was quite a comfort to Visha after everything that happened.
To keep her mind occupied while they waited for the others to return with the ingredients, Visha said softly, "You asked about my life after... everything, now I want to know about yours. Tell me what transpired with your life after it all went down."
Dabria let out a soft sigh before speaking, her voice taking on an almost wistful tone.
"You know, Wifey," she began, her tone uncharacteristically subdued, "you're not the only one who had a… colorful past after we were separated. When they moved me to a different facility after I unlocked my little death touch, let's just say my life took a turn for the worse."
Visha squeezed her gently, her pale green eyes curious but guarded. "Go on."
Dabria burried her head deeper into Visha's chest, her dark hair falling over one shoulder. "When they realized my touch could kill anything, the scientists went mad with excitement. They moved me to a high-security government facility—some underground bunker designed to keep people like me locked away. It wasn't just testing anymore. They wanted to harness my power, weaponize it. I spent years in that hellhole, surrounded by people who looked at me like I was a thing, not a person."
Her voice grew sharper, laced with venom. "I was twelve when they started experimenting with how much death I could produce. At first, it was just mice, then larger animals. By the time I was fourteen, they were making me touch people—prisoners, traitors, anyone they deemed disposable. I wasn't a child to them anymore. I was a weapon, and they wanted to know just how far they could push me."
Visha's expression darkened, but she said nothing, allowing Dabria to continue.
"When I turned sixteen," Dabria said, her smile returning, though it was cold and cruel, "I decided I'd had enough. I was tired of being their puppet, their plaything. So, one night, when they weren't expecting it, I let loose. I didn't just kill them—I made them suffer. Every single one of them. The scientists, the guards, the other staff members. I even killed the other experiments they kept there. No one walked out of that facility alive."
Her crimson eyes gleamed with a dark satisfaction. "By the time I was done, the entire place was silent. It smelled of death and decay, and I stood there in the middle of it, covered in their blood, feeling nothing but freedom. For the first time in years, I was free."
Visha nodded faintly, her expression unreadable. "And then?"
Dabria chuckled softly, though there was no warmth in the sound. "Then I went looking for the people who put me in that hell to begin with. My parents." Her voice dripped with disdain as she spat the word.
She brightened slightly, her grin widening. "My deadbeat of a father was living in a trailer park in the middle of nowhere, drowning himself in booze. The same man who sold me to the scientists for a bag of drugs when I was six years old. He didn't even recognize me at first. But when he did… oh, the fear in his eyes was delicious."
Visha raised an eyebrow, intrigued. "What did you do to him?"
Dabria's grin turned sadistic. "I tortured him. Slowly. Methodically. Every scream was music to my ears. I wanted him to feel every ounce of pain he'd caused me. By the time I was done, he was begging for death. And I gave it to him. But not before I made him confess everything. Every despicable thing he'd done."
She let out a soft sigh, as though reminiscing. "After that, I tracked down my whore of a mother. She'd abandoned me when I was three for her new rich husband and their perfect little family. I found her living in a mansion, playing house with her new husband and two bratty kids. I killed her husband first, then the kids, one by one. I made her watch the entire thing before I finally ended her."
Dabria's voice softened, her grin fading slightly. "When it was over, I felt… empty. For the first time, I didn't know what to do with myself. I had no one left to kill, no purpose, no direction. So I wandered. And eventually, I stumbled across a monastery for nuns who worshipped a god of the dead."
Visha's gaze sharpened slightly. "A goddess of the dead?"
Dabria nodded, her expression becoming contemplative. "They called her Morticia, the Giver of Blessed Death. The nuns were… strange. They didn't fear death. They embraced it, worshipped it. They believed that death was a gift, a release from the suffering of life. At first, I thought they were insane. But the more time I spent there, the more I realized they weren't so different from me."
She chuckled softly, her grin returning. "They taught me things—how to refine my abilities, how to channel my death touch into something more controlled. They showed me how to harness the pain, the beauty of death itself. And in return, I became one of them. Death's Handmaiden."
Visha tilted her head, her pale-green eyes thoughtful. "And that's where you were when the mana storm happened? Then, you became stronger using the system until the day when we reunited once more."
Dabria's grin widened. "Oh, darling, you can't imagine my joy when I saw you at the basilisk meeting. After all these years, my Wifey, alive and thriving. It was fate."
Visha smirked faintly, though her expression remained guarded. "Fate or not, you haven't changed."
"And you love it," Dabria replied with a wink, her crimson eyes sparkling with mischief. "Just admit it, Wifey."
Visha shook her head, returning her attention to the potion she was working on. "You're insufferable."
"And you wouldn't have me any other way," Dabria said with a laugh, leaning back against the chest of her beloved with a contented smile.
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